By now, you’ll pretty much know it all.  Latics battered Villa who never really turned up.  The top six side looked rigid and limited in their play whilst the rookie manager’s style of play lived up to its promise.  The home side really missed the players that moved on this summer whilst Latics fans were […]

I’m sticking to my theory that it’s better to leave your pre-season review until a couple of weeks in and no doubt I’ll be regaling you some time around the end of the month with my thoughts and feelings about how things might pan out.  Of course, it’s cheating but I have the privilege of […]

Righteous indignation. It’s worth writing just for the sound of it, but it pretty much sums up the feeling following Sunderland’s snatching of Lee Cattermole from Latics’ care yesterday. By any measure, and barring the Leaving Latics Curse striking next on Teesside, Steve Bruce has got himself a bargain. At the lower end of the […]

So that ‘s it. Before we know it, the time for experimenting has ended and it ‘s down to business on Saturday as the Latics bandwagon rolls south to Birmingham for the clash with Aston Villa. So what have we learned from the pre-season campaign? Well, mostly that Northern Rail is still as incompetent as […]

What does Paul Merson Know, eh?  It’s not like he’s ever achieved anything in the game, is it?   Everyone, I’ve spoken to since Merse’s prediction that Latics would surprise people this year, by struggling, has focussed on the negatives in the statement.  In fact it’s put the right Rodney Marshes up some people but […]

As of Saturday we now have a full house, yes everyone of the Perm family have wasted a Saturday afternoon staring at a piece  of grass, waiting for the men in blue and white to do something interesting.  The first little perm went to the last pre-season game when she was three, so same age, […]

At ‘popular request’ and to keep in with the in crowd, [thas] Not a Patch on Harry Lyon will be running a prediction league for the 2009/10 season. Each week, we will select four fixtures and ask members to predict the score for each of them.  Points will be awarded based on how close your […]

Latics 3-1 St MirrenSaturday 8th August 2009 A fiver is not that much for 90 minutes of football, but for a week’s worth of mental turmoil trying to pick through proceedings and their relevance for the real stuff that starts in a week’s time?  They probably owe me. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson […]

For a side who have consistently struggled on the goal scoring front it’s a bit worrying. We’re a week away from the start of the season and Roberto Martinez’s first team squad looks like it will contain a grand total of, erm, two strikers. At the same time Latics seem to be collecting midfielders like […]

For the first time since promotion to the Premier League we have only lost one first team player in the summer transfer market, that was the lost of Luis Valencia to Manchester United for a rumoured fee of £16 Milllion. The other players to go Camara, Siberski, and Montrose will not affect us greatly but […]