Wigan Athletic in Good Hands

It’s fair to say that the tenure of Roberto Martinez as Wigan manager has been a topsy turvy one so far. While keeping Wigan in the Premier League last season he was the brains behind marvellous home wins over Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal. At the same time, he put out similar teams that were thumped 9-1 at Tottenham, 8-0 at Chelsea, 5-0 (twice) by Manchester United, 4-0 at Championship-bound Portsmouth and his side were also dumped embarrassingly out of the Carling Cup by then Championship side Blackpool.

Over time things seem to be turning in the right direction. They key word here is ‘time’. Martinez has changed the whole ethos of the club from top to bottom. Under previous managers Paul Jewell, Chris Hutchings and Steve Bruce it was a case of adapting the team and the style of play in whatever way possible to keep the team in the Premier League.

Those methods clearly worked and in a couple of seasons respectable mid-table finishes were achieved. The trouble is it doesn’t take long for other teams to find out your strengths and weaknesses and those good seasons were often followed by relegation battles.

Roberto Martinez came to the club with clear goals and he’s well on the road to achieving them. He’s adopted a style of play which is more attractive, entertaining and pleasing on the eye. Admittedly, from the start this wasn’t always pleasing on the eye and some of the aforementioned results cast doubts over whether this would work in the long term.

To give credit to Roberto, he has always stuck to his guns and stuck to his beliefs. He continues to send out his team with those same instructions week in, week out, no matter what the previous result was. After two horrific results at the start of this season, Wigan are now really looking like a side that can have an impact on the Premier League in a way that they have never done before.

While I’m not saying that we’ll win the Premier League, I think some sort of regular mid-table finish would be a remarkable achievement for a club of our size. This especially when you consider that the top of the Premier League is getting richer and stronger and therefore making European positions harder to achieve for the likes of Wigan Athletic.

We’re not there yet by any means and I dare say there will still be the odd disastrous result along the way (there always is in this league). But finally the fans are starting to see what Roberto is trying to do here and seem to be a lot more patient with it.

He now appears to have the players he wanted, players that are capable of playing his way. If you were to watch any Wigan Athletic side at any level (first team, reserves, youth, etc) each team plays the same system and the same style of play.

Crucially for me, the reserve team is regularly full of players that sit on the bench each week, meaning they’re fit and ready to be called upon when needed and they have a wining mentality due to the fact that the reserves seem to win more than they lose as the side is now so strong. This was never the case under previous managers as they seemed too concerned with players picking up injuries in the reserves.

Another important point worthy of note is the strength of the squad nowadays. You only have to take a look at the bench every Saturday afternoon to see the healty state that the club is now in. Pretty much all of the players that now feature regularly on the bench would not be out of place in the starting 11 each week. This point was underlined in the 2-0 Carling Cup win over Swansea recently, when most of those players started the match but yet the team looked no weaker.


What has helped Roberto along the way is having such a helpful Chairman in Dave Whelan. These days, Whelan’s biggest strength that he was so badly lacking early on in his days as Chairman is that he has a lot of patience with managers and tends to leave them to do their job.

Also, the very fact that Roberto is a Wigan man through and through is the biggest factor in his success in my opinion. Had he come into the club ‘cold’ and with no feeling for the club or knowledge of what the club is about then I think we would have a different man in charge by now.

Roberto has always been a popular figure with the fans since ending his playing days in the town and has always been welcomed back with open arms. That respect which he built up all those years ago is now serving him well and is clearly helping him do the job.

Recently he’s made us much better to watch, more difficult to beat and, most of crucially of all, put pride back in the shirt. With the hard bit done, for me it’s now a case of improving the quality of the squad that bit more and building a successful team that the town can be very proud of.
Keep it up Roberto.

The Meteoric Rise of Wigan Athletic

Wigan Athletic are often criticised for their “poor crowds” but these comments usually come from uneducated fans of other clubs or lazy journalists who fail to look up the facts before they make such comments.

Therefore I thought it wise to write about the meteoric rise of Wigan Athletic, both on and off the pitch in the last 15 years or so. Just to point out some facts, you understand. Below is a table of just how much crowds have risen in that period. The 1994-95 season was my first as a fan of Wigan Athletic and I have seen first hand just how much crowds have risen over the years.

In that first season in 1994/95 the average crowd was just 1,841, which is a touch over 2% of the population of the town. Three promotions and 15 years later the average crowd is around 18,000, a staggering increase and when you consider that means almost a quarter of the population of the town inside the stadium on a Saturday afternoon I’m sure you’ll agree it’s an incredible rise over a relatively short period of time.

What’s even more remarkable about Wigan’s crowds is that for years the club has been competing for new supporters with the likes of Manchester United, Manchester City, Everton, Liverpool, Bolton and Blackburn, all of whom are in the same division and within a 25-mile radius of the town.

For a working class town like ours to have increases in prices from around £5 per adult (94/95) to today’s prices where you can pay up to £30 per adult, to have so many bodies coming through the turnstiles each week is an incredible feat and one which should be celebrated both inside and outside of the town.

Unfortunately though, too many people comment on the negative side, such as “Wigan’s ground is only 2/3 full every week” and “aren’t their crowds low” If only everyone had access to some of these statistics because it really is an astonishing rise.

The peak was at the end of the 2005/06 season, when an average crowd of 20,610 meant an increase of over 1,000% in a little over ten years! For a town of just over 80,000 people I’m sure you’ll agree that’s quite remarkable!

Well done, little Wigan Athletic!!!

Season	Average Attendance	Percentage difference	Percentage increase on 94-95	Wigan population	Percentage of Wigan population
1994-95	1,841	-	-	85,819	2.15%
1995-96	2,856	+55.13%	+55.13%	85,819	3.33%
1996-97	3,899	+36.52%	+111.79%	85,819	4.54%
1997-98	3,968	+1.77%	+115.54%	85,819	4.62%
1998-99	4,252	+7.16%	+130.96%	85,819	4.95%
1999-00	6,989	+64.37%	+279.63%	85,819	8.14%
2000-01	6,861	-1.83%	+272.68%	85,819	7.99%
2001-02	7,783	+13.44%	+322.76%	81,203	9.58%
2002-03	7,288	-6.36%	+295.87%	81,203	8.98%
2003-04	9,526	+30.71%	+417.44%	81,203	11.73%
2004-05	11,155	+17.10%	+505.92%	81,203	13.74%
2005-06	20,610	+84.76%	+1019.50%	81,203	25.38%
2006-07	18,159	-13.50%	+886.37%	81,203	22.36%
2007-08	19,046	+4.88%	+934.54%	81,203	23.45%
2008-09	18,413	-3.23%	+900.16%	81,203	22.68%
2009-10	17,884	-2.87%	+871.43%	81,203	22.02%