WIGAN MATCH REPORT

As Liverpool's annual title challenge came to a shuddering stammer filled halt at White Heart Lane, Everton fans were climbing the league by virtue of scratching their collective bollocks whilst pointing and laughing heartily at a television screen. Talk about magic tricks and being able to make £100 million pounds disappear so fucking quick without making a blind bit of difference. All hail the return of the King and lets laugh along with those loveable feather spitting red men. 

 

So what of the performance then, it was a bit shit really wasn't it? Wigan under Martinez are a dream come true these days, gone are the meatheads under the likes of Steve Bruce and in come the polite, ball playing youngsters. I like Martinez and the way he seems to ask his sides to play but they aren't half  gang of soft touches. You can only beat what's in front of you and stuff but there was a lot of huffing an puffing against these. As with most games these days, it began with us going one down.

 

Franco Di Santo, Wigans number 9, a proper number 9, with a head like an up turned Butternut Squash, was a thorn in our side all afternoon, good feet, good in the air, Physical. I may have 'Football Observing Dyslexia' here, but i could've sworn he was 4ft4 about a year or two ago when playing for Chelsea? Anyway, he's enormous. Leon Osman who was  at the heart of most of the good things we did all afternoon, criminally stood off the Brazilian this time and was almost held at bay like Scrappy Doo is when he's punching thin air, he turned, he webbed, he scored. Fuck off Everton.

 

Seconds later though, after a restart, Phil Jagielka was keeping up with the cartoon theme by doing some sort of weird Donald Duck dance in front of the main stand after heading in a rebound from a Tim Cahill header onto the bar. This is where the huffing and puffing seemed to start. You can argue that with no recognised striker on the field, defenders will have an easy shift when it comes clearing any aerial threat or presence up top. But there a few better players out there in the air than our antipodean heart throb, so what gives? Im plumping for the old 'instinct' excuse. As great as he is and as hard as he works, Cahills instinctive way of playing the game will not be that of a recognised striker who has probably played that position all his life. The positions they take up, the channels they run, the physicality they can impress upon the 

opposition which makes them lose concentration. 

 

It took Moyes until almost the 60th minute to start ringing these positive changes to his side that ultimately won Everton the game comfortably(ish). Bilyaletdinov, who most people at the club want desperately to succeed, is two years into his transitional period and just doesn't look like threatening the first team when everybody is fit, horribly under par again. With Baines clearly not trusting his team mate in that position with the ball half of the time, hopefully moneybags Makalakala FC from Russia or wherever they're from, can come in and save everybody a bit of face, because unfortunately it just doesn't look like it will change any time soon. On came Drenthe for Bily as did his fellow sub Velios not long after for a surprisingly below par Coleman.

Wigan had a few half chances, but the game was changing and Everton were pushing the visitors now. Rodwell could consider himself lucky to be over looked when Moyes was ringing his changes as the youngster was almost completely anonymous all afternoon. The final sub was Stracqulursi in the 83 minute, two recognised strikers on the pitch, hark! hark! With two big fuckers up top occupying the defenders minds Tony Hibbert curled in one absolute peach of a ball, one of those that just needs a deftest of flicks off the fod, anybody's fod, Velios provided it, get in. Ferguson-esque. We wont mention his piss weak effort moments earlier where it would have struggled to trouble a Mole in a pair of Sondico goalie gloves, no we wont mention that.

 

All that was left then was a final layer of gloss to be applied by a stupidly confident finish by Royston 'Ricky' Drenthe, who surely has to start against our first real test of the season at Eastlands next weekend. In between then and now, hopefully we can counsel a clinically 'destroyed' Louis Saha off his iPhone and ask him to inspire us to the next round of the Carling Cup on Wednesday.

 

Up those glorious Toffeemen.