Wigum v Villa - match thread

According to the O/S all 4,712 away tickets have been sold. That's impressive!

I shall leave it to our resident statos to tell you all about Wigan's form and I'll just offer up a prediction of...

1-0 Villa.

I fancy a 3-0 win.

Kodija 2
Adomah 1

A hard fought backs to the wall 0 - 1 win with an own goal the winner and we beat the mighty Wigan!

I'm going for a 1-1 draw.

Villa 4 nil win.

0-1 Villa for me, with old codger scoring. Just looked at Wigan's last ten games and they've only lost by a 1 goal margin, or won by a 1 goal margin (plus 2 draws in that lot). They are better away from home than home, ranking 18th in the Championship away, and 24th at home.

Some good stats here:

http://www.statto.com/football/teams/wigan-athletic

Graham Barrow will take charge of Wigan for the first time as interim boss following Warren Joyce's departure.

He will be without Will Grigg and Donervon Daniels (both knee), but Sam Morsy returns from suspension and Shaun MacDonald could feature after injury.

Aston Villa trio Henri Lansbury, Scott Hogan and Jack Grealish have all trained this week and may be available.

However, Nathan Baker (knee), Andre Green (hamstring) and Rushian Hepburn-Murphy (knee) are ruled out.

Analysis

BBC Radio Manchester's Paul Rowley

Graham Barrow's appointment has given Tics fans a lifeline in the hope of resurrecting the survival strategy that kept them in the Premier League against the odds for eight seasons.

It's still a tall order. The club are next to bottom, four points from safety, and remain the lowest scorers in the Championship with nine games left.

But 'Big Graham', as he's known, is a former player, manager, assistant, caretaker, and first team coach and has served the club in all four divisions. He knows the Wigan psyche. He's got the goodwill of the supporters; it's now down to the players.

Match facts

Wigan have won only one of their last eight league games against Aston Villa, a 3-0 victory in December 2012 in the Premier League.
Villa are unbeaten in each of their last seven away league matches at the DW Stadium, winning four (D3).
Jonathan Kodjia has scored 15 league goals for the Villans this season; the most by an Aston Villa player in a single season since Christian Benteke in 2012/13 (19).
Kodjia has scored four goals in Aston Villa's last four Championship matches.
Wigan have used a league-high 39 different players in the Championship this season.
Wigan Athletic have scored with just 7.4% of their shots in the Championship in 2016-17; a league-low.

Ther new manager dead cat bounce, 1-1

Subs tomorrow. So I was thinking, if SB had elphick and Richards named as subs and brought Hutton on or uses jedi at CB, unless it's some man management thing to keep them sweet, what is the point? I'd rather see U23 lads named as subs than those two. If Bruce has no intention of using them, they are just taking up bench space.

If Bruce contrives to pick the same eleven that ended the game against Wednesday then it will only confirm that the guy is utterly clueless.

He's talking about playing two upfront so if Hogan isn't fit then who steps in? Would he really play Hutton on the wing and Adomah upfront again? Or will he go for Davis or Sellers? We'll see. I also don't see the point of playing Jedinak at the back when we don't have a natural defensive midfielder who can replace him. Why not keep it simple and put Elphick in there? He just baffles me tbh. Wednesday are falling apart right now and he's more than willing to piss away a result here.

Have you seen Elphick play?

VillaBill wrote:Have you seen Elphick play?

Yes he's crap and needs to go in the summer. But this is one game against a side that has struggled to score goals. So why not keep things simple? It's just silly to totally transform a side that's been winning.

The new manager syndrome will kick in methinks so a hard fought 0-1 for me, need to keep the memento going.

We should win, so we will probably lose but things never go the way they should so we will win comfortably.

I'm hoping Bruce is right about the keeper but I personally think the kids below average, here's hoping they both prove me wrong.

Over 4,000 Villa going up. Bravo. UTV.

After last night this games has become a bit more important Bristol City winning means the gap between ourselves and relegation has closed to nine points, all it would take is for us to lose and Blackburn to beat Preston to cut the gap to eight points, Forest and Burton are also at home today. On the other hand Sheffield Wednesday lost last night so if we win, we can cut the gap between ourselves and the play-offs to 11 points. Whilst it's still mathematically possible we've got to try.

Jedi to stay at centre back.

2 right backs, 2 left backs, 2 defensive mids, 1 centre back....... what could possibly go wrong

Silly line-up, even if we win it doesn't help us in the long-run. Hutton on the rightwing isn't the future nor is Adomah upfront. So many players out of position.

Lovely cheers for that. Will see if I can stay awake for the 1st half.

Sounds rubbish so far and Wigan had better chances

Playing Hutton on the rightwing against the second worst team in the division, after the money we've spent is an abysmal decision.

Get in Chester!

Get in! 2-0 Scott hogan!!

Well done Hogan, hopefully the first of many.