There is not much to like about Wigan, an unspectacular town stuck in a maze of industrial towns north of Manchester, a pier that isn’t even a proper pier and a football club that isn’t really a proper football club!
Actually, that last one isn’t strictly true, although the fact it shares a ground with a rugby league team and comes from a town dominated by rugby league doesn’t help their reputation.
Supporters of clubs like Newcastle will always resent clubs like Wigan because they don’t have a particularly large following, they are new to the top flight, they are physical and direct, they don’t have much money, they don’t have any superstar players yet they still manage to compete on the same level. The cheek of it!
There is something snobby about the way the “big clubs� view Wigan’s position in the Premiership and if you were to take a secret poll of Premiership chairmen I bet Wigan would be the team they’d most like to drop out of the top flight this season.
But what clubs like Newcastle need to realise is that teams like Wigan provide hope for so many others who dream of forcing their way up the Football League and into the Premiership. They are the modern day Wimbledon and just because Newcastle have more fans, more history, more big name players and more money, doesn’t automatically make them any more entitled to a place at English football’s top table.
Wigan have beaten United three times at home since they were promoted to the Premiership and every time Newcastle’s performance has been a poor one. That surely puts a big question mark over the attitude of the players when they head to deepest, darkest Lancashire.
Sunday’s defeat has prompted a warning from captain Scott Parker which hints at a lack of determination against the lesser lights of English football and who can blame the Magpies’ skipper when it comes so soon after the equally uninspiring defeat at Fulham?
The loss leaves Newcastle seven points behind sixth-placed Reading with 10 games left to play this season and Glenn Roeder, despite his public confidence, must know his side face an uphill struggle if they are going to qualify for the Uefa Cup through the league this season.
Considering that is supposedly the minimum requirement for a Newcastle team according to chairman Freddie Shepherd, difficult circumstances or not, failure to do so will mean the season has been a failure - it’s as simple as that!
If Newcastle are going to make a late charge up the table their attitude must improve away from home, particularly as the likes of Sheffield United, Watford and Reading would just love to emulate Wigan and Fulham’s achievements.
It’s easy to give your all in front of 52,000 people, but it’s also easy to go missing when there are only a few thousand in the away section.
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