Room for improvement

How would we assess the last two matches?

Erm, shall we say room for improvement?

Leyton Orient was poor, there’s no getting away from that.

Latics never got going in the London sunshine but I think the departure of James Carragher to injury early on did far more to unsettle us than Orient themselves.

Richie Wellens side are a throwback to the days of old, they’re strong and extremely physical. They’ll bully a lot of teams this year and will pick up a number of points doing that.

The disappointment is that we didn’t better stand up to that and also didn’t really string much together in the passage of play.

We’ve had a terrible recent record in London, so it’s no surprise we didn’t get anything from Brisbane Road.

It’s a good job the football is only part of the day and otherwise excellent day out in the capital would have been ruined if it was like that. Thankfully the football’s only a small part of the day.

There was an opportunity of sorts to bounce back on Tuesday night against Notts County in the Coca Cola, Worthington, Milk whatever they’re calling it this year cup.

It’s fair to say we’ve not had the best of records in the aforementioned competition in recent history.

In fact it makes for pretty abysmal reading. So nothing really matters apart from reaching the second round but it didn’t make for good watching.

Lowe went strong in his line up selections but it’s as clear as day that we’re having a mini injury crisis at the moment.

Off the top of my head we’re missing Matt Smith, Baba Adeeko, James Carragher, Johnny Smith, Callum Mcmanaman, Chris Sze, K’marni Miller and now we can add Isaac Mabaya to that list.

Any of those lads would be a miss but to be missing eight of them, it’s virtually a full side.

Ironically certain sections said that injuries were a thing of the past after the Northampton game and solely linked to Shaun Maloney. Rather than just being one of those unfortunate parts of football that happen.

It’s only two years ago that we had one of best seasons for injuries in the clubs history in 23/24, no surprise that we spent the first half of that season fighting for a play off spot before injuries bit.

It’s uncertain the extent to Mabaya’s injury but it looks a bad one for the young lad. His reaction and that of both Wigan and Notts County’s medical teams said the same.

It’s such a shame for the young lad as he’s looked decent when he’s featured and clearly Lowe had big plans for the man from Liverpool.

With all of those lads out and the defence looking paper thin at the moment I’m sure we can expect moves in the transfer market over the next couple of weeks.

The return of Will Aimson on Saturday after a three game suspension can’t come soon enough and I would expect a defence of Kerr, Aimson and either Sessegnon or Mellish on Saturday against Peterborough.

We could do with a win on Saturday, but we’re going to have to be a lot better than the last two matches to make sure of that. At least Paul Mullins is off the mark now, let’s see if he can build on that on Saturday.

Sean Livesey

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