ESPN Soccernet - Correspondents - Wigan Athletic
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Wigan Athletic

What a difference a week makes. From the excruciating loss against Chelsea and being mired in the depths of the relegation zone to Saturday's magnificent win over Blackpool and into the lofty heights of 17th place. It's magical stuff.

The Blackpool game saw us play one of our best games for a long time, maybe our best performance of the season. The early goal seemed to calm us down and gave us confidence to play a really fluid game. I know Blackpool are on a bit of a bad run at the moment but they beat Spurs at Bloomfield Road only a short while ago, so they're not the pushovers that some people think they are. I think we should look on Saturday's win for what it is - an excellent result against a good team in a high pressure game.

The best player on the pitch on Saturday was N'zogbia. Blackpool just had no answer to his passing and his direct running. His goal was taken superbly too. There are not many teams involved in the relegation scrap who are fortunate enough to have a player like N'zogbia. He could just be the key to our survival this season.

So now the next challenge is Sunderland away. The way that the Black Cats seem to be capitulating in the second half of the season means we should at least fancy our chances to take something from the game. If we win we'd go a mere point behind Sunderland. Something that didn't seem to be possible around November/December time when they were beating Chelsea and we were stuck in the relegation zone.

Never mind what a difference a week makes, back in August Blackpool thumped us 4-0 at the DW. It just goes to show how things can change. I just hope we can take this confidence forward into next week.

Thanks for reading. You can also follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/PaulJohno500 for news views and random thoughts.

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Comments

Posted by NG on 04/19/2011

Would like to see Wigan stay up. I've found it very interesting since Martinez took the helm that the rugby town is playing football much less rugby-like than many of their competitors.

Results have been unfair to Wigan much of this season, but it's hard to deny that the competition all have decent squads with good managers as well. Martinez is class, though, as are many of these players, so I'd like to see some of his South American acquisitions show their stuff next season in the premiership

Posted by Justin Smith on 04/19/2011

What a game and what a blog, I feel. Please feel free to e-mail me about N'Zogbia - eg, do you think he will stay next season?

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