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Wigan Athletic Fans Verdict: Down And Probably Out

How the fans reacted to a game that near enough marks the end of our Championship status.

By harry.chafer
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PA Images via Getty Images

I felt numb at full time on Saturday. Not because I wasn't feeling any emotion but because I was feeling too many of them: anger, sadness, disappointment and also a little bit of justice in a perverse way.

In truth, relegation has been coming for a long, long time. And now the grim reaper of League One is well and truly at our front door. Mismanagement from the top for too long and horrendous performances on the pitch for too long have left us here, and we deserve it.

Saturday afternoon summed it up. A full house at the SCL, a must-win game against basement club Wigan Athletic, and we still couldn’t conjure up a win. We could hardly conjure up a goal.

As you can well imagine, there was a huge amount of emotion from the fans after the game. Here's how they reacted...

The performance

If you could ask for one must-win game, it’d be at home to the bottom-of-the-league side in front of a packed-out crowd. But they couldn’t even manage a victory this time.

I don’t agree with Noel Hunt who said we dominated the game and it was a ‘Reading performance’. Huffing, puffing and giving absolutely everything at this stage of the season should be a given. It’s that bit of quality that makes the difference, and we just didn’t have it.

We’re a team that’s been starved of any tactical nous or attacking identity, and that was painfully evident against Wigan. You lose games like that, you deserve to go down...

Destined for League One

Last weekend the proverbial Fat Lady entered the building, on Saturday she started waiting in the wings.

It was a day that the last five or so years had led up to. In 2018, we went to Cardiff City on the last day needing a point. Five years on and we’re here again, needing to get a win at Huddersfield Town next week, and that’s only if we’re lucky. We could be done and dusted by Thursday night.

The fans had their say on being destined for the drop, which was further compounded by Huddersfield’s win at Cardiff yesterday afternoon...

Dai Yongge

There’s a whole heap of reasons why we are where we are. The biggest of those though undoubtedly is the utter shambles and mismanagement from the top. And, ultimately, that falls on the shoulders of Dai Yongge.

Yes he’s invested into the club, but it’s the people he’s trusted with that money who have been the problem - whether that’s Ron Gourlay or our good friend Kia Joorabchian.

There are better people in charge of the club now. But it’ll be a mammoth, years-long process to rebuild some of the mess Dai has created. The fans certainly aren’t his biggest backers...

Conclusion

As I’ve been writing this I’ve been sat watching Huddersfield take the points in their must-win game against Cardiff, thus meaning that Reading being relegated on Thursday evening is a very feasible possibility.

That’s the difference. Huddersfield managed to find a way, away from home, to conjure up huge wins while we can’t beat Wigan in front of a sold-out crowd. I guess that’s also the difference between getting someone like Neil Warnock in early enough, whereas we left it far too late to get rid of Paul Ince, leaving the weight of the world on the vastly inexperienced Hunt.

A dark weekend for the club.

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