FA Cup winner Ben Watson certainly secured ‘legend’ status within his six year spell with Wigan Athletic.
The centre-midfielder started his career playing for Crystal Palace after climbing his way through the youth ranks. Watson made his professional debut as a 17-year-old in 2003 against Watford. The Londoner spent nine years playing in the first team in South London making 187 appearances.
In 2009, Watson made a switch to the North to Wigan for a fee of £1.89m. In his first year at the club Watson had loan spells at both Queens Park Rangers and West Brom who were Championship clubs at the time.
In his time at the Wigan, Watson was most commonly remembered for his heroics in the famous 2012/13 season. Watson suffered a broken leg very early on in the season in a 3-0 defeat to Liverpool when colliding with winger Raheem Sterling. The former England U21 international spent six months on the sideline before returning to action in May 2013 in a win away at West Brom. Watson featured again in the following game which ended in defeat against Swansea City.
After only playing 176 minutes of football since a broken leg, Watson was brought on with only nine minutes to go of Wigan’s only ever FA Cup final, against Manchester City, and the rest was history. The substitute scored a last-gasp winner in injury time which turned out to be the biggest goal in the clubs existence.
Test your knowledge with these five quickfire questions about Watson’s time at the club:
