Just back

[PedalR]

well not really, got back quite a while ago but too fed up to log on...

Anyway, DO NOT pretend to yourself that we were not severely done over by hanging onto fact wee hit woodwork a couple of times.

We were slow, sluggish, flat-footed and laboured. Their pace/movement/crispness/sharpness was streets ahead of us.

Went to sleep on the basics far too often; not picking them up for throws/corners, sloppy control/passing, tame powder-puff tackling and failing to give player on the ball any options.

Defence was pretty solid considering it's newness but Jeez, first time in the season Fitz has to lunge/stretch a bit and he's injured AGAIN!!!!

MIdfieldrs huffed and puffed but it was far too slow - showed about 20% of Wigan's pace/intensity and incision.

Dunno who you'd class as being in our attack... s'pose it was Tommy and Adel out wide and Aggy on his own up front. None of them got any change out of a solid and pacey Wigan defence (particularly their full-backs). Tommy looked really lightweight, slow and ineffectual. It was clearly his role to look out for their short corners and he went to sleep on that at least 3 times - he just weren't at the races today.

If this were our team for rest of season we'd struggle to get 20 points. Hopefully, Joey, DJ and Jay will bolster us but any new blood simply has to be pacey now.

[BennyBoyRs]

I think you're being a little harsh. They had luck on their side, and we didn't. I'm not saying that was the only reason they won, but I felt there were positives to take from today, especislly as we're going to be stronger for the next game.

[QPRdan3]

Mate chill out look at the team we had out there. We lost 4-1 away at Scunthorpe last season with a better team out. I keep saying this, and it's true, our season starts on the 12th Vs Newcastle. By then we would have 3-4 more quality players, plus Campbell and Bothroyd fit. We're 3 games into our first Premier League season for 15 years and have 3 points on the board, considering the team we've had in those games we've done brilliantly well.
Don't get too down heartened, this is still an incredible time in our history!

[PedalR]

Nah - Wigan didn't get out of 2nd gear and didn't need to. They basically just fiddled about the last 20 mins or so. Had we have scored I'm pretty certain they'd have upped it a bit and re-established their cushion.
I'm just being honest about today's game against a team tipped for bottom 5. I fully appreciate we have better players to come in and will get better. However, I still remain concerned about "ordinary" players like Watson and Caldwell looking far livlier and more switched on than most of our players. Ultimately you don't have to be particularly gifted to play to a shape and get tight, get stuck in and close down. Irks me to see team like Wigan do that sort of stuff a lot more effectively than us.
BTW was expecting a small Rs turnout due to early KO. However, difficult to tell from being amongst the throng but it seemed we could have 2000ish there. Not very noisy but not much to shout about. Stadium accoustics not as good as Goodison so felt quite muted compared to last week. Despite loss and lacklustre showing on pitch team got a good ovation and some of the noisiest support of day at the final whistle.

[bushcelt1]

Cheers for the report.....i'm sure things will improve on the team front. Great to here a lot of rangers made the effort. Did mccarthy play for them??-fancy him to be a cracking player.

[paulmason]

Looked like they should have all played on tuesday to get their shape and balance sorted, but all the clever people on here said today was more important. Taarabt looked a different person today, which i hope is as because a new sherif is in town.

[Morris]

Agree 100% with PedalR, we were miles away from being competitive today. If we had got a point it would of been robbery.

Influx of players needed or we will badly struggle, NW said that himself on his BBC interview.

[Olly]

Once again two deflections, but still no improvement that two players turned their backs for both goals, you just can't do that. Neil needs to get on top of it.

[PeterG]

The biggest problem we had today was underhit passes, our itentions were good but we undehit our passes perhaps 60% of the time especially though the midfield

on top of that we were caught in possession 5 times across the back four but wigan failed to capitalise

wigan were actually pretty poor and gave away possesion easily, many stray passes but we were still very pedestrian when they put the ball across our central defenders

Perone mad a couple of good interceptions but on other occasions moved like a block of concrete, i expect some positional improvement from him but doesnt convince at the moment, that said he should have scored two goals, one in the first half when he sent a free header over the bar and hit the post in the second half

despite the above with luck we could have easily won the game with a makeshift defence and weakened attack so although it would have been great to grab some points uts definately not wrist cutting time and with a couple more players, crouch,ridgewell and swp we will be ok

best player for us today that i could see was a toss up between taraabt and buzsaky gabbidon also did well especially as he was out of position for most of the gane

[acricketer]

I watched the match on a live stream. The most gaping aspect of our play was our pace. We are the slowest team in the league.