It's that time of year again

It's that time of year again where Latics go out and mess the whole season up, but like when anything goes wrong at a Football club people are always quick to work out "who's to blame?" In a direct response to the unfortunate situation the club finds itself in.

There are a few theories that you could look at as to why Latics are struggling as we are, but I think one thing you have to look at the league the club is in and the nature of the league in the past. Of the current top 6 Bournemouth are the only club who haven't really spent big, and if you look at the previous league seasons you'll always find that there is always one surprise package that finishes in the top 6. The rest it seems have to spend their way out of this Division. It can go wrong for clubs of course but if you look at the fortunes of Latics over the years you'll find that we were very fortunate during the Joe Royle years with the money that the club paid for players especially when you look at the make up of the make up of the squad during the "pinch-me" season it was a side made up of rejects from bigger clubs that found themselves around us at the time such as Leeds and Man City. But Football has changed over the years and now it seems that when you get to this stage in the season having a big squad helps massively with injury, suspensions and fatigue that affects club. People seem to have an attitude that "they're Footballers they should be performing 100% to the best of his ability every single game" but this is a very blinkered view of the way things are. If a club like Huddersfield and Southampton have replacements when a player starts under performing and we don't then they clearly have the advantage, it is also a motivating factor for the player who has the starting place to know that if he underperforms that his place in the starting 11 will be taken up by somebody else.

The last time Latics had a strong squad was during 02/03 season when the club incidentally had money to spend, when Clyde Wijnhard and Chris Killen got injured up stepped Wayne Andrews and Carlo Corazzin to lead the attack, same in midfield when during the spell of 10 straight wins the midfield was made up of Matty Appleby, John Eyre and Darren Sheridan but Tony Carss, Lee Duxbury and Paul Murray also played their part in getting the club a top 6 finish and many other season in a 24 team league the points total of 82 would of seen the club gain automatic promotion. With exception to Crewe the rest of the top 6 were Wigan, Bristol City, Cardiff and QPR all of whom had much larger budgets than the rest of the Division. The current crop are made up of loan players and players on limited contracts, we have to face facts that the club doesn't have a lot of money at its disposal compared to the current top 6 means we can't afford to replace the strongest starting 11 and with gates getting lower and lower the club doesn't look like moving forward anytime soon unless we miraculously attract investment. At the end of the day money talks and we as a club unfortunately don't have it.