Only two weeks after a shock home defeat at the hands of Barnsley in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy Quarter-final, Gary Caldwell’s Wigan will be looking for revenge in a crucial league clash at Oakwell.
Without a win since November 21st against Shrewsbury, Wigan will be looking to get back on the road to promotion with a victory away at relegation-battlers Barnsley. The last time the two teams matched up at Oakwell was Wigan’s opening game back in the Football League in August 2013, a comfortable 4-0 win for the Latics.
This time around the matchup will likely be far more cagey and constrained, with both teams desperate for points, albeit for very different reasons. Both sides will have vivid memories of their very recent face-off at the DW Stadium on the 5th of December. Heavy underdogs Barnsley valiantly fought off the Latics on penalties to advance to the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy Area Semi-final. However Wigan manager Gary Caldwell, speaking to the club website, sees the fixture more as a chance to regain ground on the top five instead of a match to gain retribution for the defeat two weeks ago.
““It’s not so much a case of redeeming ourselves from the defeat to Barnsley in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, it’s another game in League One and that’s our only target this year, and has been since the very first day of pre-season” Caldwell said.
“It’s another game we’re aiming to pick three points up from. The league is tight right from mid-table to second or third place, Burton have a little bit of a gap at the top, so we have to close that gap and keep chipping away to get where we want to be.”
Wigan are perched in the final playoff spot, only one point above 7th placed Bury. Although many might argue Wigan’s goal now for the remainder of the season is to consolidate a playoff position, the Latics are still only five points away from the automatic promotion places, knowing that a winning streak could launch them to a top two spot.
Injury-wise, Wigan will be again be without captain Craig Morgan and midfield man Chris McCann, both whom will likely remain out of action until 2016. Returning from an elbow injury, Northern Irishman Will Grigg is hoping Wigan can bounce back from the disappointing Barnsley defeat two weeks ago, a game in which Grigg scored twice.
“We’ve got to put things right this weekend against Barnsley,” Grigg said. “We’ll be going there in a professional frame of mind with the aim of getting three points, and we’ll do our best to deliver that.”
Recognising the busy Christmas period ahead, a period which can make or break a team’s season, Grigg said: “The Christmas period is an exciting one for us with the fixtures we’ve got.” “You can pick points up left, right and centre having so many games, and if we go on a little run over Christmas then we’ll put ourselves right in the mix.”
