Monday 1 December 2014

I'm a believer...but even believers have doubts

By no means has the dust settled on events at Wigan Athletic, but the hysteria seems to have died down marginally - if only until the FA make their ruling on Dave Whelan's comments. And of course there's the small matter of the FA deciding Malky Mackay's future.

I have tweeted my upset and discussed with friends how let down I feel by my club. My club that 18 months ago had just won the FA Cup in the biggest shock since the Crazy Gang; we were managed by one of the nicest guys in football; and despite the season ending in a heartbreaking relegation, we could look back at eight seasons in the Premier League when nobody gave us a hope of even one.

I'm not saying everyone took Wigan to their hearts; it's not like we were everyone's second team or anything like that. But we were difficult to dislike. Roberto Martinez had built his reputation on avoiding relegation by playing classy football. None of this 'kick them in the air' lark. In seasons gone by, one by one we dismissed the big guns and nobody could begrudge us that fairytale.

In 2011/12 as we came from nowhere to stay up with a game to spare our theme tune became the Monkees' 'I'm a Believer.' And my God did we believe. We believed in our manager, our players and our mentality of 'little Wigan taking the piss.' And do you know who else we believed in? Chairman Dave Whelan.

Whelan had taken us from the Old Division Three to the Premier League in ten years. When he first took over and said that was his vision we all laughed at the deluded man who started out with a stall on Wigan market.

But he didn't let us down. He gave us a new stadium and financial backing that all led to a 3-1 win over Reading in May 2005 that took us to the Premiership.

Back then it was Paul Jewell in charge; someone who we're led to believe had a good relationship with Whelan. But it wasn't until Martinez took over in 2009 that it became clear that Whelan had appointed his adopted son.

And this is where it was all to go wrong for every manager in Wigan's future. They're not Martinez.

Owen Coyle was never the right fit. Fans called for him to be sacked like I've never heard Wigan do before. But with Uwe Rosler I felt like he was the manager we meant to appoint after Martinez. He came in wanting to build his team; play football the right way and lead us back to the Premier League.

I'm in the unusual position of being a Latics fan who goes to more away games than home ones. I've lived in London for my job since 2009 and have seen some horrors in the capital: 9-1 at Spurs, 8-0 at Chelsea, the night we went down at Arsenal; but I don't think I've left a match more disconsolate than QPR in the play-offs last season.

That truly felt like a missed opportunity. But after I'd sat in my car in tears whilst eating a pick-me-up Mars bar for 20 minutes, I then pulled it together enough to drive the short journey home in the pouring rain and I had the slight consolation that Rosler had achieved something. If he could take us to the play-offs from the position we were in, imagine what we were going to do this season.

And that's where me and probably thousands of other Wigan fans were totally wrong.

This season has been a shambles to put it mildly. Rosler's inability to find a decent striker is what ultimately cost him his job. But I was genuinely disappointed when Whelan sacked him.

The biggest disappointment of all was the manner in which Whelan handled it. He came out in support of Rosler one day, and then a few days later he was gone.

Whilst Wigan's target should undoubtedly be promotion, I always had faith that Rosler would never drag us into a real relegation battle. If he could take us from mid-table mediocrity to the play-offs last season, I didn't doubt he could do the same again.

But if only the performances on the pitch were the worst of it.

Mackay's appointment was doomed from the start.

What the hell was Whelan doing getting involved with someone who is being investigated by the FA? Regardless of what it is for, it's a messy situation we had no part in. And now we've been dragged through the mud and arguably made to look even worse than Mackay in the first place.

I do think Whelan has been guilty of nothing more than being a naive old man. I don't think he's racist or anti-semetic. I just think he's old-fashioned and doesn't realise how offensive he has been. Nor does he realise how much damage he has done to our lovely little club.

So where now for Wigan? Well that's for the FA to decide on two fronts. In a few weeks we could be without our chairman and without our new manager. Regardless of the outcome, this period will go down as the lowest in the club's history.  If Mackay and Whelan do both stick around, let's hope for everyone's sakes that they form the father-son relationship that Dave had with his beloved Roberto.

I hope that most fans, like myself, will continue to traipse to unfashionable Championship away grounds, and continue to sing 'I'm a Believer.' Because throughout all of this we shouldn't forget what Whelan has helped our club to achieve. Without him we wouldn't be able to sing (to the tune of 'We Built this City'), 'We beat Man City, beat Man City with a Watson goal.'

Another of Wigan's trademark chants is 'Let's hang on to what we've got' when we take the lead. I wonder if Uncle Dave wishes he'd done that with Uwe now.

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