football rambles

The first trip of the weekend was to see Villa take on Wigan in the Premier League. Unfortunately nowadays a trip to Villa Park is a bit of a rare treat. We usually look for games to go to that Villa will probably win, however the season has been that disappointing even a game against a poor Wigan side could be a struggle. It was a good day out, but the result was a draw, which didn't do Wigan any favours but more or less made Villa safe from the drop. It seems strange that it's still basically the nucleas of a aquad that finished sixth for 3 seasons in a row and this season has flirted with relegation. The problems seem to stem from poor tactics rather than poor players and the players that looked out of sorts seemed to have been given poor instructions. Villa started off brightly enough, but went behind to a goal by Charles N'Zogbia after only 10 minutes. I don't think anybody expected it or expected that that would be the end of the scoring. It wasn's as 6 minute...

When Wigan Athletic were formed in 1931 they started off wearing red and white halves, which is the same colour as the perhaps more famous Rugby League club. They didn't start wearing their more familiar blue and white strip until 1947. The reason for the change in colour being that there was a clothing shortage on at the time and the kit suppliers could only manage to provide them with blue and white. Since then they have always worn some combination of blue and white, with a special kit being manufactured in 1973 for their appearance in the FA Trophy final. At the time Wigan were in the Northern Premier League and unfortunately for them they went down 2-1 to Scarborough. One exception to them wearing blue and white came when they introduced a blue and black kit for the 1993 - 1994 season. In 1995 with Wigan close to bankrupcy Dave Whelan of JJB sports fame took control of the club and they started their climb up the divisions. He did start to make some changes to the kit too, as ...

For some reason the odd Premier League fixture that I have been able to attend this season has always featured Wigan Athletic. On Saturday it's Wigan who take on Aston Villa at Villa Park. Hopefully Wigan won't win, but as they have already featured in a club focus, I'm now going to have a look at the history of their shirts.

Yesterday I went on what seems to be my annual trip to Fulham's Craven Cottage to see Fulham take on Wigan. I think I may have been banned from Villa games down there by Scott, so the most neutral of games was probably seen as a good idea (by him). That said, it was a sell out crowd mainly because Fulham charged a very resonable fiver for the game. The game itself was a bit one sided with Fulham's Clint Dempsey scoring both of Fulham's goals in the first half. Predictably he was named as man of the match by most of the Sunday newspapers, but I think that Baird, Salcido and Dembele were also as impressive if not more so. Andy Johnson, who many thought would have to retire after a horrific injury earlier in the year, also came on late in the match and added to the Fulham forward line. In general not a bad game, but a bit one sided. The picture shows Fulham's Zoltan Gera tackling Wigan's Hugo Rodallega.

Wigan were formed in 1932 and kicked around in the Lancashire League and the Cheshire League. Their first application for the league came in 1950 when 4 clubs were added to the league; 2 to Division 3 North and 2 to Division 3 South. However, they lost out to Scunthorpe and Shrewsbury. In 1954 the Latics took Newcastle to a 3rd round replay in the FA Cup and they felt like they would be elected to the league, but they weren't. After several other aborted attempts at getting into the league they became founder members of the Northern Premier League in 1968. In 1971 after narrowly losing to a strong Manchester City in the FA Cup they again thought that they had a good chance of getting in the league, but again it wasn't to be. As a protest the following season they applied to join the Scottish League, but they didn't get a single vote and in England the place that they coveted went to Hereford United. In 1975 they won the NPL for rhe second time, but they weren't in any s...