Premier League preview: Wigan v Chelsea
When you are at your lowest ebb, you don’t really want anyone to turn up and make you feel worse.
And so, as Wigan boss Roberto Martínez still reels from the horror show that his side put on in a 4-0 home defeat to Blackpool at the weekend, here come the champions.
“We need to be perfect in everything we do,” said the Spanish boss, a master of the understatement, but there is room for optimism in Greater Manchester, and minds don’t have to be cast too far back to reveal why.
Chelsea were flying back in September last year. Six wins from six had placed them top of the Premier League table, but they were to topple off it on a raucous afternoon at the DW Stadium.
Petr Čech was sent off as Wigan recorded a 3-1 victory, and it will be the memories of that result that Martínez will hope that his troops can call upon on Saturday teatime, and not the 8-0 defeat that they suffered at the hands of the Blues on the final day of last season. Well, you would wouldn’t you?
“Chelsea in my eyes have the strongest squad in the league,” said Martínez, “but we're ready to react from our disappointment [against Blackpool] and be competitive in a game we showed last season that we're capable of winning.
“Firstly it's important not to allow Chelsea to get comfortable, feel themselves and enjoy their football. If they do that it's a matter of time before they hurt you.
“Overall last season gave us the experience of how to play against these sides. But we have to match them off the ball and work really hard. We have enough quality to create chances and score goals, but everything else needs to be perfect as well.”
It certainly does, and with Chelsea moving serenely from that eight-goal demolition of Wigan that ended their title winning 2009/10 campaign, to a 6-0 win over West Brom on the first day of this season, the signs look ominous.
Chelsea never really hit top gear against the Baggies, and that must strike fear into the rest of the division, but the Blues have received some sad news this week with the retirement of 21-year-old full-back Sam Hutchinson, who has been forced to call it a day all too prematurely due to a long-standing chronic knee injury. He played four matches for the first team.
As one Chelsea career ends another begins, with £17million Brazilian signing Ramires set for a debut at the DW Stadium, that’s if he can force his way into Carlo Ancelotti’s winning team from last weekend. If he does, then one of his new team-mates will be keen to provide him with a helping hand.
“Now I like the way I am playing,” said Nicolas Anelka, “but I have always liked to create goals and give assists because I like to win. When you want to win, even if you don't score you want to make someone score and this is what I did last weekend [against West Brom, when he had a part to play in two of the goals].
“For me when you score and when you create a goal, it is the same. When you like football, I think you must like to do both as well.
“I will try to score more and I will try to do more assists but as I say, the most important is to win games and I am sure even if I don't score, even if I don't give assists then someone else will do it.”
Not perhaps the attitude you’d expect from a player who was given an 18-match international ban this week, but Anelka found himself in the curious situation of being seen as more sinned against than sinner in the French farce that engulfed the World Cup, and now seems happier with the “bunch of clowns” at the French FA out of his life.
He’ll feature for Chelsea tomorrow, and will once again look to be part of another resounding victory for the champions.
It won’t be 8-0 this time, but neither will Wigan repeat the success of last season.
Both sides had wildly different starts to this campaign, and it’ll be ‘as you were’ here.
Prediction: Wigan 1 Chelsea 3
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