Being a Wigan Athletic fan has never been plain sailing. There have always been storms that have halted the club’s progress, even if it has so often ridden the waves and kept moving ahead.
Where are Latics here and now?
As fans we all have our own opinions, but there is nobody who is not concerned about the near future for the club.
In order to get a fan view we reached out to bronxbomber, a contributor to the Cockney Latic Forum. He is a true Latic fanatic who has supported his club since their non-league days.
Here is over to him:
There is an old saying “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”.
The team that lost at Bolton on Saturday is the worst Wigan side I have seen in thirty years. They only bucked up a bit in second half when Maloney came on, and he’s off in a couple of weeks.
You have to blame DW. Three managerial disasters, and now selling off all the ‘Family Silver’ .
There is no money to spend and he is trying to ship players out, but who is going to take them?
Apart from McManaman – a decent player but whose temperament is questionable – and Maloney, the rest are dross. A friend of mine told me that he was speaking to a Latics coach last week and he asked him why Delort and Riera weren’t playing . His reply was “Because they are c..p” .
You can add Cowie , Forshaw, Huws, Tavernier and Holt. The latter is finished now as he is out for nine months. I bet he’s laughing all the way to the bank. £30,000 a week and still has 18 months on his contract. Ben Watson will forever be a Latics Hero, but I’m afraid he is another player who is finished. Only positive from Saturday is that it showed Al Habsi is a better keeper than Scott Carson. Man of the Match. Without him it could have been 6….
I know my opinions probably differ from a lot of people but I have watched Latics from the non- league days. I see where we have come from and have watched players who had a passion for the club, sadly lacking in this day and age. But I suppose this can be said for most of today’s players. It’s just a job, not like in the past when players would have played for nothing and practically did.
I think opinion is divided on MM amongst the fans. In my opinion he was the wrong man for the job. He was out of work and a bit of a “no no” as to his past reputation. But let’s face it he was cheap which appears to be the main requisite on how Dave Whelan conducts his business.
Be it commercial or football the last three appointments have been disasters in managerial terms. Look where Derby are now with McClaren. It is muted that he applied for the manager’s job, but DW chose Coyle. I wonder why?
Even though I think MM was the wrong choice, he was left with players who were not up to Championship standard, for whom Rosler forked out all the money we got from selling off the ‘Family Silver’, around £12 million. Huws, Tavernier, Taylor, Forshaw, Cowie, Delort, Riera. They aren’t as good as the players we already had at the club and that’s not saying much. Holt a catastrophe buy and now out for nine months, so we won’t see him again. Where are Kvist and Rogne?
I can’t see there being any money to spend in January so it will have to be loan players and that will mean shipping people out. Roger has gone. Maloney, our only decent player, is rumoured to be on his way out too.
So who do we get in?
Let’s face it Wigan is the last resort for players. “If we can’t get fixed up with any other club then we will go to Wigan”. I hear fans saying “Yeah but players want to be playing” . To most players, playing football is a job. How many ex-players do you hear saying “I never go to games.”
It’s a job … I think a lot of the players at Wigan have this attitude. If they got paid on performance ratings, as in the real world with individual output targets, they would buck up.
At the moment they appear to be going through the motions.
Holt responds on Twitter to criticism of being overweight.
The novella Jekyll and Hyde was published by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886. It is about a lawyer who investigates strange happenings between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde. The phrase Jekyll and Hyde has since come to signify a person who is vastly different in moral character from one situation to the next.
It can be fun trawling the fan forums on the internet. You can unearth exceptional posts, the quality of which can put professional journalists to shame. But you will also find the other extreme, those that are off the wall, often products of anger and frustration. As fans we rarely get a real glimpse into what is happening behind the scenes at a football club. We make most of our judgments based on what we have seen on the pitch and the sifted information that reaches us from the media.
But whatever the rights or wrongs of the fans forums, they act as a barometer, reflecting upon issues which are of concern to fans. The number of responses to a particular thread can give an indication of the degree of concern in that area at the time.
Some topics really get Latics fans contributing their thoughts. The Latics Speyk forum on Vital Wigan Athletic started a thread on Grant Holt on August 10th. At this moment in time it has had 276 replies and 28,754 views. More posts on Holt might well be raining in as I write this article. Most are highly critical of the player, questioning his commitment. Many of the earlier posts questioned his fitness, suggesting he was grossly overweight.
“Holt won less headers in his time at Wigan (..) than Riera did on Saturday (and i think Riera only won 2 or 3!). Clearly he isn’t bothered and hopefully we can move him on. I was hoping maybe we could get him fit and firing but he obviously doesn’t care enough.”
“He’ll be happy to rot in the reserves on his last contract, probably doing his coaching badges or his media work for radio Cumbria in his spare time. The 2.5 million quid he’ll make from us will set him up nicely. Would you leave?”
“As to other loan signings being as bad – at least they actually moved on the pitch occasionally. Holt’s singular lack of effort (or perhaps it was lack of fitness) stands out as something that I seldom remember in 35 years of watching Latics.”
Some questioned the treatment of Holt by Uwe Rosler and by fellow fans. His home base was also an issue:
“Grant Holt has not helped himself with one thing and another but I am on record as saying the stick and personal criticism is nothing short of disgraceful and serves no purpose in motivating a player who could do a job for us.”
“Rosler either came to WAFC with a preconceived opinion of Holt or he is working to orders from Whelan/Jackson to force him out, Rosler’s first game in charge was Maribor away less than a week after he was appointed, for that game he alienated Holt by leaving him at home, he publicly announced it was to work on his fitness, that isn’t exactly the way you would go about it if he was going to be part of your imminent plans, three weeks later he was shipped out on loan.”
“Things with Holt for me was that the manager who bought him wanted to use him up front on his own & it’s not a role that he is able to play to any great effect. Yes he picked up a couple of injuries but either side of those he was poor. His weight was also an issue & whilst I don’t go to every game it always seemed that his shirt was getting tighter & tighter every time I saw him.
So by the time Rosler arrived he saw an unfit, out of form player who couldn’t play the type of role that Rosler likes his centre forwards to play. On top of that it now appears that Rosler asked him to move nearer to Wigan & he refused. Not criticising Holt for that coz I’ve now doubt that it was part of the deal that bought him here but I know plenty of managers who have insisted on that in the past for a combination of making them feel closer to the club/community & probably more importantly that sitting in a car for 1.5-2 hours then training for 3 hours then going back into a car for another couple of hours isn’t good for the body & maybe that’s why he was picking up niggling injuries.”
But to many Huddersfield fans Holt has been more of a Jekyll than a Hyde:
“Holt is what we have needed for over a year now. His experience, leadership and the way he bullies defenders is great to watch. Lots of people on here were crying out for this signing for a long time and it still amazes me that it took so long to sort this out.Whilst I understand the need to have a budget, on this occasion we should sign him up at ALL costs.”
“Exactly the kind of player we’ve been missing. The guy is absolute class. Still crazy to think we got him in, and it would surely be even crazier to think he’d want to be here for a bit longer.”
“The little back heel he hit to play in Scanz was superb. Much more than just a big centre forward, the fella’s got great awareness of what’s around him and he annoys the hell out the opposition, wins aerial balls and holds it up wel and got an eye for goal too, a proper old school centre forward. …
I like him…..A lot.”
The comments are taken from the forum of the Down At The Mac fansite.
Clearly Holt has been a very different player at Huddersfield than he was at Wigan. Almost a Jekyll and Hyde situation.
The above fan comments were made a month or two ago. Since then the Huddersfield fans have cooled down a little on their seemingly desperate need to sign Holt and the hostility towards him in Wigan has diminished somewhat, although there are fans who really do not want to see him come back.
However, Malky Mackay has opened the door to the big Cumbrian’s return by stating: “Grant Holt is absolutely a Wigan Athletic player, make no mistake about that……There’s an understanding from me of what he brings in terms of goalscoring ability.”
Holt has made 10 starts for Huddersfield, making one appearance off the bench. He has scored two goals and made three assists. Since his arrival the Terriers have moved out of the relegation zone.
Holt’s history at Wigan makes sad reading. Owen Coyle brought him in as the centre forward who would get the goals needed to propel Latics back to the Premier League, even if fans questioned him giving a three year contract to a 32 year old. After scoring in the first game at Barnsley he found more goals hard to get. and managed only one more, a penalty against Middlesbrough. He came back too early from a nasty knee injury and from then on he had elements of the crowd on his back. The change of manager from Coyle to Rosler exacerbated his problems. Holt left in January having scored that brace of goals from 13 starts with 8 appearances off the bench.
One of Rosler’s first moves had been to leave Holt out of the squad that travelled to Slovenia to play Maribor. Then in January the player was sent on loan to Aston Villa until the end of the season. When he came back he was consigned to training with the development squad and he was not given a squad number. Moreover his face was conspicuously absent from the squad photograph at the start of the season. Being shipped off again on loan seemed inevitable
Rosler’s treatment of Holt might well have contributed to his own demise. But Holt was not the only player alienated by Rosler. Mackay’s recent pronouncement that all players will be given a fair chance will be music to the ears to such as Ali Al-Habsi, Fraser Fyvie and Thomas Rogne.
The centre forward position at Latics has certainly been problematic over the past year or so. The goals have been sparse. Only two of Wigan’s twenty league goals this season have been scored by the central striker, a disturbing statistic.
Marc-Antoine Fortune is a fine player in terms of his hold-up play, but a record of 7 goals in 61 appearances (including 31 starts) for the club hardly suggests that he will be a threat in the penalty box. Andy Delort and Oriel Riera have struggled, with only one goal between them. Media reports about both of them going back home may be mere speculation, but Latics might cut their losses in the January transfer window should a good offer come in for either.
A little over a couple of years Grant Holt was being tipped for an England place. But now at 33 years of age he is surely past his best. After a great start at Huddersfield his performances have become less productive. Moreover if he were to come back to Wigan would those fans who have been so critical of him in the past be willing to give him a fresh start? Or would he be subject to jeering?
Should either Delort or Riera be leaving in January it will surely open the door for Holt’s return. Does Mackay believe that Holt could turn things around at Wigan and win the crowd over?
Can Holt put back the clock and play like he did in his glory days at Norwich?
The huge media events over recent days have in many ways overshadowed what fans would normally be looking at when a new manager is appointed. Our intention is to take a look at Malky Mackay as a football manager – how did he take Cardiff City into the Premier League, how was he regarded by the fans?
In order to learn more about Mackay’s time at Cardiff we reached out to Benjamin James of the View from the Ninian fan site.
Here’s over to Benjamin:
Malky Mackay came to Cardiff City after Dave Jones had, very much so, taken us as far as he could. Whilst Dave Jones had filled his side with stars such as Bellamy, Chopra, McCormack and Bothroyd, Mackway filled his squad with workman like footballers. Craig Conway, Aron Gunnarsson, Kenny Miller and Don Cowie.
That first season, 2011-12, was expected to be transitional but Mackay got the team playing. His style of football isn’t particularly exciting or ground breaking but he sets his team up to be tough to break down. During his first season, we didn’t concede many but we also didn’t score too many. He still took us to the playoffs, finishing five points clear of 7th, and to a League Cup final which is one of my proudest Cardiff City memories to date.
The next season, the colour change ignored, was a good one on the pitch. With players like Bellamy, Kim Bo-Kyung, Nicky Maynard and Jordon Mutch coming in, it was really only a matter of time before Cardiff went up. Finishing top of the league by eight points, they conceded the second-least and scored the third-most. 10 home wins in a row basically sewed up the title and the points tally would have been more if Cardiff hadn’t drawn six of their last seven games.
Whilst many will point to Malky’s overspending in the PL season, something that I think the Chairman at the time had some responsibility for, Cardiff did well in the PL under Malky. A famous victory over Man City was followed up by draws with Everton, wins over Fulham, Swansea, and a draw with United. His last win, over WBA, left Cardiff in a good position. Our relegation was as much to do with Tan’s destabilising of the club as it was Ole’s inability to get us playing.
For what it’s worth, as a football manager, I liked Malky. In his first season, he restored so much pride back into the football club; pride that Dave Jones had sapped away from us. He also got the players fighting. Fans want to see players who would run through brick walls for the club and we had that in spades.
He spoke to the fans and built bridges that had previously been burnt. As much as I wished he’d spoken out against the red kit, I understand why he probably couldn’t. He was drastically weakened at that point and some fans will never forgive him. And all Cardiff fans, at the time, were on his side when he was battling Tan. Tan was an evil ruler and Malky was standing tall against him. The high point of that season for many was the 45 minute protest at Anfield where Cardiff fans sang his name over and over.
The only criticism I would have of Malky is that he is sometimes reluctant to give attacking players the freedom they need. Craig Noone was a star of our PL season but Malky seemed to hold him back. Rudy Gestede, who is on fire at Blackburn, never really started for us and Malky didn’t really know how to play him. He also struggled with a striker during our PL season; the one he signed was crocked from the beginning and he tried to play Campbell as a target man, poacher and out and out striker all at once.
Sadly, his reign was tainted by the text message row. For what it’s worth, no-one saw it coming and I, a vehement defender of Malky, was shocked by it all. .
William Kvist is a highly experienced defensive midfield player who Latics have signed on a one year contract following his release from VfB Stuttgart. The 6 foot tall Dane is 29 years old and appears to be the right sort of player to play in front of the Latics defence. Kvist made 8 appearances on loan at Fulham in the second half of last season.
After signing Kvist commented on the Wigan Athletic club web site:
“I love to protect the back four, stay compact, I’m hard-working and a team player – I look to protect the balance of the team as a defensive midfielder. I make interceptions and then try to play the ball as quickly as possible to the players who can make things happen offensively. I didn’t score a goal in Germany and I would expect too much in that regard but defensively I love to defend for the team and make good, quick passes to the attacking players.”
Kvist started his career in Copenhagen where he won five Superliga trophies and was Danish Footballer of the Year in 2010 and 2011. After having considerable experience in the Champions League with FC Copenhagen he joined VfB Stuttgart in 2011, playing in the Bundesliga for three years.
In order to find out more about William Kvist we reached out to Mark Bjerremand through Twitter (@mfbjerremand). Mark is an avid Danish football fan.
Here’s over to Mark:
I’m just a fan of football and I’m Danish so I obviously follow Danish football. What I am writing about is my knowledge and impressions of William Kvist. If anything I am more interested in the person behind – the human being – more than the player.
It says something about the faith that Denmark coach Morten Olsen has in Kvist, that he was named captain of the Danish team that beat Armenia on Sunday in the European Championship. Kvist has played almost 50 games for Denmark. Kvist has been in the starting eleven for the national team for the past four years.
William Kvist played his first game for FC Copenhagen in 2005. He played in a variety of positions. He worked very hard to get into the Copenhagen team to begin with. He was played as a fullback and did really well (also for the national team). However, he wanted to play as a central midfielder and slowly he worked his way into the starting eleven and became captain for the Copenhagen team back before he left for Stuttgart in 2011.
His real breakthrough for Copenhagen was in a playoff match for the Champions League against Ajax Amsterdam – his shot rebounding off a defender for the winning goal. He had been very much involved as a very young player at the time, playing fullback. It was a huge surprise that Copenhagen beat Ajax – they were down 1-0 on aggregate (from their home match).
Kvist is an intelligent guy. – he studied business economics when he played for FC Copenhagen. And he is also alternative in his approach to football. He’s got his own personal coach and he uses hypnosis and is conscious about nutrition. For the European competition in 2012 he brought his own juice presser to press his own beetroot juice.
Kvist made 68 appearances in Stuttgart from 2011-14. His time there was not easy, mainly due to changes in manager.
He is very much a team player, with a high workrate. When he played for Copenhagen he participated more in the attacking play. Now he is a largely defensive midfield player. I tweeted about William recently because the Danish press has been negative about his latest performances for our national team. They say that he just plays the ball backwards and to the side, which is true to some degree. But he is playing the’ balancing player’ role, in front of the defence, very much the link between the defense and midfield.
You could say that Kvist is professional about his job and also a bit dull – maybe he is typically Danish! (Bendtner is the exception).
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Monday was an uplifting day for Wigan Athletic supporters. The signings of Adam Forshaw and Andy Delort were confirmed and there was the surprise signing of William Kvist from Stuttgart. But the icing on the cake was surely the capture of Emyr Huws on a permanent contract.
Huws is only 20 years old, has a superb technique and is tenacious in the tackle. Born in the rugby hotbed of Llanelli he joined Swansea City as a teenager, moving to Manchester City in 2009. Huws was to become captain of the club’s under 21 side. He joined Northampton Town in October 2012 on a three month loan, with ten appearances, making a positive impression. He made his debut for City in January 2014 as a substitute in an FA Cup match at Blackburn. A couple of weeks later he joined Birmingham City on a one month loan. Being Birmingham’s player of the month in February, his loan was extended until the end of the season.He proved to be an excellent loan signing for the Blues and his spectacular goals against Burnley and Middlesbrough brought him public acclaim.
Huws could prove to be Rosler’s best ever signing. He has everything it takes to become a success, not only in the Championship, but in the Premier League. He has already made two appearances for Wales and will surely make many more in the future.
In order to get a Manchester City fan view on Huws’ transfer we reached out to BlueWolf (@BlueWolf1894) . He is a co-owner of mcfcforum.com and wrote for MCFC’s website throughout last season.
Let’s pass over to BlueWolf:
And so, once more, another Manchester City hopeful moves on to a different club; this time around it’s Emyr Huws to Wigan Athetic for around £3m.
Five years he had been with us after moving from Swansea City at the age of 15 and much praise was heaped upon him, even Captaining the U21 side. But, in fairness, he had always been on the fringe of appearing for the 1st team squad with a number of loan moves in the last couple of years, which in all likelihood was hampering his progression with us.
The thing is, us City fans are desperate for someone to permanently break through; we have this wonderful Academy set-up (with the brand new facilities opening up its doors in a few weeks), yet everyone who goes through it seems to end up playing for someone else. Sure it brings in some extra money but everyone loves a true homegrown player taking to the field brought up in the club’s own image. The last one of real note was Michael Johnson, and that didn’t exactly end well, did it?
That’s not to say it won’t happen, because it will, we’re just getting a little impatient. Over to you Iheanacho, Lopes, Rekik, et al.
So what are the Latics getting for their money? A good and solid holding midfielder, who has impressed everywhere he has been at; obviously Rosler saw enough to give him a 4 year contract. Of course at the age of 20, he still has a lot to learn, but he has a decent head on his shoulders, and as long as he keeps it there he should do wonders for you guys.
The reported £3m or so has surprised a few Latics fans, not least because it’s about £3m more than they thought would be spent after splashing out on Kvist, Forshaw and Delort, but I suppose the £7m for McArthur helped out a little.
Rosler said, “Emyr has impressed everyone since arriving at the club and we feel that he can have a major role to play in the future of the club. Everybody can see what a very talented player Emyr is, and from the first training session with us leading through to the games he has played, he has been very good.
At just 20 years old he is already with the full Welsh national team and the chance to sign him on a long-term contract was too good an opportunity to turn down.”
It’s just a pity, City didn’t think the same.
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LOS THREE AMIGOS 