Away to Wigan, the kings of inconsisteny… Predictions anyone?

By: Martini Extra Dry | October 25th, 2008

Sunday 26th October at 3pm sees Villa play Wigan Athletic at the JJB Stadium. Wigan are currently sitting 14th, with just a single point more than relegation zone located Stoke. It’s been a very up and down season so far for Steve Bruce’s men, who currently have the Premiership’s top scorer but have also failed to keep a single clean sheet at home. Clean sheets are also an area where Villa fall short though, having only managed to keep the ball out of our own net on the games where we’ve failed to put it into the opponent’s one too.

Wigan’s inconsistency
Wigan’s league record to date is a win, a draw and two losses at home and the same tally away (does that make them consistent then?), including a 5-0 away thumping of third placed Hull but also gifting Tottenham half of their entire points tally for the season.

2007-2008
Last season Villa were locked in a battle-to-the-death with Everton for a fifth placed finish and entrance to the UEFA Cup (we got their in the end anyway, via the last ever Intertoto Cup) but after holding Everton to a fiercely battled 2-2 draw up at Goodison, we lost to Wigan in the penultimate game and handed fifth place to Everton. This was the game when everyone knew that Gareth Barry would not stick with us. Here we were playing dreadfully at home to relegation-battling Wigan, handing on a plate to Everton the fifth place that we had worked so hard to be in a position to compete for. Barry must’ve have been thinking “Screw this bunch of under achievers, I’m off to the car crime city to play alongside my bestest friend in the whole wide world; Steven Gerrard”. Luckily for Villa though Rafa Benitez and his bosses never managed to agree a fee with Villa and Barry stayed.

To be fair, Wigan had their survival to think of and a win guaranteed they stayed up, but we also had just as much to fight for. We were trying to cap a great season of progression by getting into the UEFA Cup but we played very poorly and failed to break through the Wigan defence. Thank heavens for the Mickey Mouse Cup… errr hang on, I mean the Intertoto Cup.

Villa’s front-line
Tomorrow’s game has been moved back 24 hours, from today, to accomodate for Villa’s midweek UEFA Cup game against Ajax, a game which saw Villa successful on the scoreboard but worries raised over the striker situation. Many are fearing that we will line-up tomorrow with Marlon Harewood as our lone striker, after Carew missed the Ajax game and Agbonlahor was stretchered off in the dying seconds of it. Gabby has not suffered as severe an injury as it was feared but he won’t be training prior to the Wigan game so his appearance chances are somewhat unknown.

Onto Carew and boy what a can of worms appears to be opening there. Rumours have it that on the night before the Ajax game, Carew was in a lap dance club on Broad Street in Birmingham. The papers are, as you can imagine, absolutely lapping (Oh god, I promise I didn’t mean that awful pun!) this one up. I think the actual events were that Carew and his girlfriend were having a soft drink in the non-stripper area (who knows though, maybe she’s partial to a bit of tit too) of the Rocket Club. But he does seem to have stayed out past his club-enforced curfew of midnight, so O’Neill will no doubt be handing out a bollocking to the dirty stop-out, but I’d find it a bit harsh if the rumoured £100,000 fine was imposed. The fact that Carew missed Thursday’s game though, does add to the trouble he’s in. Martin O’Neill is well-known to not take any shit from his players, so his appearance tomorrow is also questionable.

If Harewood does start up-front, I still feel we have plenty of firepower as long as we play the same five-man midfield of Milner – Reo-Coker – Barry – Petrov – Young again. The pace and stamina of Young and Milner, backed up by the attacking prowess of Young (the other one) and Shorey, makes it seem like we have three strikers when we only field one.

…And Wigan’s
Wigan should have back the January Villa target, Emile Heskey, so we will need to defend tighter than we have so far this season. New captain Martin Laursen will need to have Heskey marked tightly or he will be putting Zaki in on goal all game and that is not something we want to be encouraging.

Predictions then
Now last week I said that revenge was going to be sweet against Porstmouth and we drew a blank, so this week I’m not going to tempt fate with any small talk, I’ll just hit you straight with my scoreline prediction: 1-3.

What do you reckon? Have Villa got the away-day guile to beat Steve Bruce’s men? Or will Zaki pop in a hat-trick and send our good start to the season tumbling?