Wigan Athletic 0 Blackpool 4

WIGAN ATHLETIC

Roberto Martinez didn’t just lose a game today, he lost droves of Wigan Athletic fans’ confidence in him as well. No fight, no passion, no continuity, no goals, no positives (unless this is as bad as we will see this season, I am trying) and certainly no reason to think we are going to do well this season.

Wigan Athletic above anything else has always had hard working players that would die for the cause, that bunch that was on the field today should feel ashamed to pick up their pay cheques. In fact I hope they read this and decide to donate all of their wages this week to the Wigan Athletic Supporters Club so that they can fund a new venue in the East Stand which will cater for the very fans that they have let down.

With regard to the game, two absolute howlers from Chris Kirkland a defensive disaster and a wonder strike saw us sink to a humiliating defeat to a Championship team that came and had a go. I am not taking anything away from Blackpool, they were good value for their win, if we had played just 20% of the passion that they did we would have turned this result.

Last season our defence was all over everywhere and we conceded a lot of goals, dare I say that on this performance we could well suffer worse than we did last year. Martinez needs to get his players understanding each other as they looked like they had only just met minutes before the game kicked off.

Blackpool on the other hand made up for what they lacked in talent and style by showing a togetherness and work rate that we should expect of our team as being a minimum commitment. They were very fortunate for the first goal as a speculative cross loops over everybody to land at Taylor-Fletchers feet who can’t miss from a yard.

The second goal was a massive blunder from Chris Kirkland as Marlon Harewood’s shot was cruising safely into the Latics keeper’s hands. It was a really soft effort but the stand in captain (Kirkland) somehow managed to let it slip through his hands and into the net.

Kirkland yet again was at fault for the third goal, when instead of catching or guiding another weak effort from Granlin round the posts for a corner, he just palmed the ball into the path of Harewood again who slotted his second and Blackpool’s third.

After the break we immediately got a goal back only for the linesman to rule it out for offside, how he thought it was offside is beyond me and everybody else in the ground as Gohouri was clearly 3 or 4 yards behind his man and was still behind him when he headed.

A bad decision and as I will always maintain, decisions like this change games. As bad as we were playing, after making a double substitution at half time, we come on the pitch and score a perfectly good goal, it gives us a boost a lift, gets the crowd back on side and away we go to get two more goals.

Instead we are still 3-0 down, gutted after a really bad decision, the heads go down even further and Blackpool maybe don’t make two substitutions of their own as they have just conceded. I am in no way saying the result would have been any different, actually I am, we would have had a goal on the sheet at least, but unfortunately we will never know.

We then gave away another really soft goal just 15 minutes from time and the Stadium emptied to a ring of booing, I will never boo my football team, but I fully understand the feelings going around the ground.

We still need to put this into prospective though, it is one game and I don’t think we could play that badly again this season if we tried. So let’s get the next two games out of the way and start looking forward, secure N’Zogbia et al and get the team steadied and knowing what and where they are.

As I mentioned earlier, I think the players should throw all their wages for this week into a pot for the Supporters Club to be able to fund the building work that is needed for us to have our own Bar and room on the site of the Stadium.

Report by Jason Taylor