Ipswich Town v Wigan Athletic 
Tuesday 4th April 2017 – 19:45
Portman Road
Jamma's Opening Thought
There are a number of moments, matches or statistics that could be said to epitomise Ipswich Town in 2016/17, and in fact that could be a debate all of its own. Would it be our part in the stat that still has Rotherham’s draw at Portman Road in October as their sole point on the road all campaign? Or is it the Blues’ impressive unbeaten run in February and March, which nevertheless yielded just the one win from eight outings? To both of these records you could ascribe the label ‘Typical Ipswich’, and the same can be said of Saturday’s latest draw, against Birmingham. The stalemate was universally acknowledged as another scrappy, turgid affair between two sides desperately short on quality and confidence, featuring a Town display which mirrored any number of other games this season where we have lacked creativity and invention. And yet, thanks to a fortuitous strike from Grant Ward, who admitted that his freak goal was intended as a cross, we somehow ended the day a point further away from the relegation zone. Tantalisingly for the fans, we aren’t picking up sufficient points to pull away from trouble, but are just doing enough to tread water…for now. It feels like a lifetime ago, but cast your minds back to the beginning of the season and we seemed to be bemoaning our bad luck every other week due to some poor refereeing decision or other. Well we certainly can’t put our recent slump down to misfortune and, if anything, we have been lucky not to have dropped further points, due for the most part to some more sublime goalkeeping from Bartosz Bialkowski. If Tom Lawrence has most often proved to be the matchwinner with his stunning goals, then Bart is surely the only one who can rival him for Player of the Season in terms of the number of times he has kept us in contention with some breath-taking saves. He was at it again against Birmingham, not least with two crucial interventions at the death, first saving from Lukas Jutkiewicz’s point-blank shot before somehow keeping out David McGoldrick’s unintentional back-header from the resultant corner. Not for the first time in recent weeks, we could count ourselves fortunate to escape with a draw following an under-par performance.
The main talking point surrounding the team selection on Saturday was obviously Jonathan Douglas’ surprise recall to the starting line-up for the first time since Boxing Day. I have nothing against Douglas as a player, and I don’t necessarily think that playing two defensively-minded midfielders was wrong, considering we also had three strikers and the forward-thinking Grant Ward on the pitch. But if I hadn’t already suspected that Mick McCarthy was sticking two fingers up at the fans with his selection, his efforts to defend his decision hardly did himself any favours. To imply that he had little alternative when Toumani Diagouraga was on the bench was disingenuous at best, and an insult to the supporters’ intelligence. And now, in the latest episode of 'Douglas-gate', McCarthy has said that he thought the under-fire midfielder was 'probably our best player' on Saturday. Again, nothing against Douglas personally, but our manager does seem to be going to Mourinho-esque lengths in defending his player while trying to make a point. In the same week as Mick had stressed the importance of sticking together as a club, his comments have risked stretching an already fractious relationship to breaking point. Instead of being able to concentrate on securing the wins still needed to preserve our Championship status, we have seen the focus drawn back to the simmering tensions between supporters, manager and owner. With all the media coverage that this has attracted, it certainly won’t have gone unnoticed by our upcoming opponents, not to mention rivals for the drop. The next team we welcome to Suffolk, Wigan, tick both of those boxes. Having failed to secure the win against Birmingham, we have piled the pressure on ourselves further as the games start to run out…
The Opposition – Wigan Athletic
Founded in 1932, the club has played at the DW Stadium since 1999, sharing the stadium with rugby league club Wigan Warriors.
They previously played at Springfield Park for 67 years.
Wigan Athletic played in the lower Leagues until 2nd June 1978, when they were finally elected to the Football League after 34 attempts and near misses over the preceding 46 years, including one controversial but headline-making application in 1972 to join the Scottish League Second Division.
They gained their first Football League promotion under the management of former Liverpool player Larry Lloyd in 1981–82, when a points tally of 91 saw them join the former Division Three for the first time, beginning a 10-year spell in English football's third tier, until they were relegated for the first time in the club's League history in 1992–93.
Wigan struggled in the fourth tier of English Football, finishing well down the table, and average attendances fell to 1,845 by 1995.
Local entrepreneur Dave Whelan acquired the club in 1995, providing funds to move into the JJB Stadium, now named the DW Stadium in his honour.
Through Whelan's business connections in Spain, he attracted three Spaniards to the club – Roberto Martínez, Isidro Diaz, and Jesus Seba – who became known as 'The Three Amigos'.
Whelan appointed John Deehan as manager during the 1995–96 season. Deehan took the Latics within two points of a play-off place in his first season, and the following year Wigan Athletic became Division Three champions.
In the summer of 2001, highly-regarded young manager Paul Jewell took over the reins. His first season in charge saw mixed results, but Jewell's second season in charge was far more successful. Wigan Athletic went on a run to the quarter-finals of the League Cup, and won the Division Two championship, securing promotion to the second tier of the English Football League for the first time in their history.
After losing their first ever game in Division One, Wigan Athletic confounded expectations to go unbeaten for the next 17 games and finish seventh in Division One.
The following season , in the last home fixture, the Latics won promotion to the top division of the English football for the first time in their 73-year history by finishing second in the League.
The club's first ever Premier League season (2005-06) saw a 10th place finish, which remains the club's highest ever league placing.
Over the next four seasons, Wigan struggled for Premier survival, with a number of managers taking the helm over this period.
Wigan appointed Roberto Martínez, then manager of Swansea City, as manager prior to the 2009–10 Premier League season.
At the beginning of the 2010–11 season, Wigan fell to the bottom of the league by the end of February. However, despite remaining in the bottom three for the majority of the season, the Latics managed to retain their Premier League status on the last day of the season.
In the 2011-12 season, Wigan reached the FA Cup final for the first time in their history and went on to beat Manchester City 1–0, with a goal in injury time, earning a place in the following season’s Europa League. Unfortunately for Wigan, this season also ended their eight-year spell in the Premier League and they became the first team to be relegated and win the FA Cup in the same season.
On 14 June 2013, Dave Whelan revealed that a deal had been agreed with Owen Coyle to become the new manager of Wigan Athletic, replacing outgoing manager Roberto Martínez, who left for Everton. Coyle left the club by mutual agreement on 2 December 2013 having won seven games out of twenty-three. Uwe Rosler replaced him on 7 December.
On 9 March 2014, Wigan beat Manchester City in the 6th Round of the FA Cup to reach the semi-final at Wembley for the second successive year, where they played Arsenal, and lost on penalties after normal time and extra time resulted in a 1–1 draw. After finishing 5th in the Championship, Wigan lost their Championship play-off semi-final to Queens Park Rangers.
Rösler was sacked in November 2014 with the club in the relegation places, and was replaced by Malky Mackay. Whelan resigned as chairman on 3 March 2015, remaining as owner but handing over the chairmanship to his grandson David Sharpe. The following month, with Wigan in danger of relegation to League One, Mackay was sacked and replaced by former Wigan captain Gary Caldwell, yet the team ended the season with relegation.
Over the following summer the club underwent a transformation, with the majority of the playing staff that had been relegated leaving and a raft of new signings arriving.
The club soon found themselves challenging for promotion in the play-off places by mid-November. Following an impressive run of form in the second half of the season, in which the side lost only once in 23 matches, the club effectively sealed promotion at the first attempt.
The Gaffer – Graham Barrow
Past Match – Video Highlights – Trev
3 MASSIVE points in the fog:
Media Watch – K L Blue
New club secretary:
http://www.twtd.co.uk/ipswich-town-news/31444/
Town Linked with out-of-contract Dons winger:
http://the72.co.uk/78305/ipswich-town-l ... ns-winger/
Northstander's View:
http://www.greenun24.co.uk/ipswich-town ... _1_4958719
MM on Douglas treatment:
http://the72.co.uk/78268/ipswich-boss-unhappy-at-fans/
Form Guide
Ipswich Last 5 Matches – Currently in 17th place with 46 points
Ipswich Town 1-1 Birmingham City
Cardiff City 3-1 Ipswich Town
Barnsley 1-1 Ipswich Town
Ipswich Town 0-0 Wolverhampton
Ipswich Town 1-1 Brentford FC
Wigan Athletic Last 5 Matches – Currently in 23rd place with 34 points
Newcastle Utd 2-1 Wigan Athletic
Wigan Athletic 0-2 Aston Villa
Wigan Athletic 0-1 Bristol City
Birmingham City 0-1 Wigan Athletic
Blackburn Rovers 1-0 Wigan Athletic
Fixtures of Interest
BRIGHTON VS BIRMINGHAM
WOLVES VS NOTT. FOREST
Match Referee – Andy Davies
Final Thought – Bluemike
Did February actually happen or was it a figment of my imagination? Either way, a month in which we played Reading, Villa, Brighton, Leeds and Norwich and remained unbeaten now seems a lifetime away. All the good work and feelgood factor that may have been ever so slightly restored has been blown away with poor, ineffective, boring, passionless displays against the likes of Brentford, Wolves, Barnsley, Cardiff & Birmingham. This was a run of games which really did lend itself to us picking up a fair few points and banishing any lingering doubts about relegation fights and the like, but no, we have to mess it up and do it the hard way, assuming of course we do do it.
The initial lifting of our fortunes following the arrivals of Diagouraga, Huws, Taylor, etc., etc. now sees us back to square one. I did not envisage we would ever see Douglas & Skuse starting together again, nor did I want to see the hopeless 4-4-2 formation brought back with the powder puff Sears and Bru playing a part but that is exactly what we got on Saturday. It just seemed to me like every wrong decision we could make we made!! I suppose these days we should be grateful for any point that comes our way and the one against Birmingham could prove to be massive, seeing as we were so inept.
So are we at the "must win" stage when Wigan come calling? I for one believe we are. You have to assume that we will get nothing from games against Fulham, Newcastle and Sheff Wed so for me we are looking at finding at least six points from games against Wigan, Burton, Rotherham and Forest and, taking into account that three of those games are away, we have to beat Wigan. It’s that simple, nothing else will do. With the crowd again turning very toxic during Saturday’s game, things could well spill over should this one go tits up. Already I was hearing grumblings of protests and pitch invasions to force the issue and much is also being said on social media, etc.. All we need is to be punished with a points deduction for such actions and that really would be game over!! It won't be pretty and it won't be easy but Town to edge it for me. COYBs
IPSWICH TOWN 1 WIGAN ATHLETIC 0
very good. If only ITFC could be on SKY every week......, he hasn't had a bad TV game.
1-0 McGoldrick
