Wigan Athletic 0, Blackpool 4: The gobsmacking triumph at Wigan on Saturday was as startling a result as any Premier League observer cared to remember and, after nearly 40 years away from the top table, the post-match euphoria was entirely understandable. In sober reflection, however, the fact remains this is likely to be a Championship fixture next season.
NOBODY LIKES a party-pooper but, after Blackpool spent the weekend savouring the tangerine dream that was their return to football’s elite, Ian Holloway will today remind them that at their seaside home the tides that come in have an unbreakable habit of going out again.
Wigan were utterly abysmal – the team that signed off in May with an 8-0 drubbing by Chelsea again supine and easy prey for Blackpool players still on an adrenaline-fuelled high after promotion.
Holloway knows Arsenal at the Emirates on Saturday will be chalk and cheese different and said: “I just hope we’re not going to get embarrassed.”
Very much a realist, the manager will be at pains to bring his charges back down to earth after one of the most memorable days in this famous old club’s history.
Talking of which, those suggesting that this success constitutes a zenith need reminding that Blackpool were runners-up in the top division and FA Cup winners in the 1950s, when they had four players (the legendary Stanleys, Matthews and Mortensen, plus Harry Johnston and Ernie Taylor) in the England team. There is no “Wizard of the Dribble” or “Morty” today, and a painful example just down the road should suffice in reacquainting the present team’s feet with terra firma.
Last season Burnley, also promoted via the play-offs, beat Manchester United and Everton in their first two home games, and much good did it do them. They went on to be relegated. By Holloway’s own estimation, his class of 2010-’11 is not as good as the one that finished sixth in the Championship. They have been undermined by the loss of strikers DJ Campbell and Ben Burgess, among others, all of whom found more lucrative employment further down the leagues.
Working with a wage ceiling of €12,500 a week in an inflationary era when average Championship players can earn twice as much, Holloway has endured an frustrating summer, getting “thanks, but no thanks” from an estimated 40 targets as he strove to master the alchemist’s art.
Invited to comment on his manager’s travails, the chairman, Karl Oyston, said: “The summer . . . has been a fast and steep learning curve, and there are areas where we’ve not adapted as well as we might have done. I’ve been very disappointed in the way some agents have conducted themselves. They stymie their players’ careers, rather than enhance them. No deals should be about the agent.”
These are not so much early as primordial days but Holloway appears to have done well in recruiting the well-travelled Marlon Harewood, who scored twice on debut, and the unheralded Elliot Grandin, a French striker who was a thorn in the side of Wigan’s defence throughout.
Harewood had an unsung rival for man-of-the-match honours in Gary Taylor-Fletcher. He sounds like your local Tory candidate but he scored the first goal, had another wrongly disallowed for offside and, at 29, having arrived at the top level via Northwich Victoria, Leyton Orient, Lincoln and Huddersfield, was instantly effective in a roving role across the front line. The next rabbit from the hat could be Birmingham’s Marcus Bent, the 32-year-old peripatetic striker, formerly of Charlton, Everton and Blackburn.
If Blackpool left the DW stadium on cloud nine, Wigan had the look of dead men walking. Embarrassingly bad, they were booed off at half-time, at which stage they were 3-0 down, and again at the end.
The manager, Roberto Martinez, was a model of restraint in describing their performance as “unacceptable”. Their ineptitude was personified by Chris Kirkland, an England goalkeeper not so long ago but who looked anything but in letting two of the goals slip through his butterfingers.
- Guardian Service
