[Lord Snooty]

Huddersfield Town v Wigan Athletic
Sky Bet League One
Tuesday December 3rd - 20:00 ko
at the John Smith's Stadium

Huddersfield Town welcome Wigan Athletic to the Town Ground on Tuesday night for a big night of League One football under the lights on Sky Sports.... AND IT'S LIVE!

Town will be without Mickel Miller, one of our best players this season, after he was stretchered off in the last game at Leyton Orient. Brodie Spencer has been starring for Northern Ireland in that left wing back role, winning the Man of the Match award in the recent win against Belarus, and would be an ideal replacement, especially as Ollie Turton has now returned from injury and will be available on the right side. But manager Michael Duff, seems to want to give Josh Ruffels his chance to shine after being overlooked previously in favour of the under performing Jaheim Headley.

Eleswehere in the team, we will still be without Matty Pearson and Rhys Healy, who both got injured against Charlton Athletic. Luckily, Michal Helik came back from injury just in time to replace Pearson and scored his first goal of the season down at Brisbane Road.

Healy's absence is another worrying situation. He is so injury prone, it must be awful for the poor lad. He wasn't even tackled to pick up this latest one. Just running along chasing the ball.

More worrying is the fact that most of our remaining strikers are poor, even by League One standards. I don't include Callum Marshall in that category. He's young and still very raw and has great potential. Reports coming from West Ham though suggest that the Hammers may be looking to sell him in January and I don't think Town will have been impressed enough to fork out a fortune on him. Probably end up on the bench at a Championship club. Having said all that, haven't we got him for the full season?

As for Wigan, they appear to be doing alright now after the last few turbulent years. They have new ownership now that followed all their windings up and points deductions, in the local businessman Mike Danson, who also owns a 25% stake in the more famous rugby league team that shares the stadium with them.

They won the FA Cup in 2013 and have now secured their spot in the draw for the 3rd round, which takes place on Monday night on BBC2 at 7pm, by beating Cambridge Utd away after extra time on Saturday. That was their third win in a row following a home win against Northampton Town and a 1-0 win at Barnsley.




A brief history of Wigan Athletic:

Second Division / League One (level 3)
Champions: 2002–03, 2015–16, 2017–18, 2021–22.

Fourth Division / Third Division (level 4)
Champions: 1996–97.

FA Cup
Winners: 2012–13.

Associate Members' Cup / Football League Trophy
Winners: 1984–85, 1998–99.



Head to Head



Town lead the head to head with 13 wins to Wigan's 11, with 8 draws.

I can't recall many good games between these two clubs. They tend to be desparately dull.

The first time we met was back in the 1973/74 FA Cup 1st round when the Latics were still a non league club. We beat them 2-0 with both goals coming from young Bob Newton, who had just turned 18 the day before.

They got elected into the Football League in 1978, in place of Southport and so with us being in Division 4 at the time, we were one of their first league opponents when they came to Leeds Road and came away with a point in a 1-1 draw. Paul Bielby scored ours from the penalty spot.

The following season we did the double over them. My first visit to Springfield Park saw us win 2-1 in the promotion season of 79/80, with Ian Holmes and Peter Fletcher scoring. We'd done the double over them before October was out as they came to our place and got spanked 4-0. Fletch scored twice in that one with Brian Stanton and David Cowling adding the others to take us top of the 4th Division table.

Looking down the list of results on Soccerbase, it's very hard to spot anything else interesting. They pumped us at the Galpharm in the FA Cup back in 2013 when they were a Premier League side and had current boss, Shaun Maloney in the line up. But then there's a lot of 0-0's and 1-0's with probably the most memorable being the late winner from Nahki Wells at the JJB in the 2016/17 promotion season.

The most recent season we had together was 2022/23 when they did the double over us despite getting relegated. The 2-1 home win I seem to remember was one of the most miserable evenings watching football I've ever had. Here's hoping we don't suffer such like again on Tuesday.

So what's going on down at the JJB? Managed nowadays by Shaun Maloney, the former Hibs boss. He took over in January 2023 when Kolo Touré was sacked.

He was born in 1983 in Malaysia, where his dad was a helicopter pilot working as a flying instructor. His dad was English and his mum Scottish and so when Shaun was five, mum won the resettlement argument as the family went to live in Aberdeen. He was a keen tennis player as a kid and was one of the contempories of the young Andy Murray until Shaun decided to stick with football.

He joined Celtic in 1999 and made his debut in the Old Firm game at Ibrox two years later, playing in a 3-0 win. He went on to play over a hundred games for Celtic, winning the Scottish Player of the Year award in 2006, which led to his transfer down south to play for Aston Villa in the Premier League.

That was to play for his old Celtic manager, Martin O'Neill, but it didn't work out as he would've wanted and so after 18 months he returned to Celtic. His second spell there was injury ravaged but he did add to his medal haul, taking his tally at Celtic to five League titles and three Scottish League Cup winners medals.

In 2011, he went back to England and another Premier League team, Wigan Athletic. He had four seasons there, in which time he won the FA Cup and got relegated.

After a short spell in America with Chicago Fire, he signed for Hull City, helping them reach the Play Offs. He was an unused sub in the Final, but they did win, which gave him one last crack at the Premier League, before injury forced his retirement.

During his playing career, he won 47 caps for Scotland, scoring seven goals.

He went into coaching, first with Celtic's kids, but then joined his old Wigan boss, Roberto Martinez as a coach for the Belgium national team.

Then in December 2021, he became manager of Hibs, staying there for a season and a half. He was sacked after losing the League Cup semi final against Hearts.

His next job was the one he's in now where he repeated what he did as a player, getting relegated.

Recent form - last 6 matches:

L.Orient 0-2 Town
Town 2-1 Charlton
Town 4-1 Man Utd u21s (EFL Trophy)
Crawley 2-2 Town
Tamworth 1-0 Town (FA Cup)
Town 2-0 Exeter

Cambridge 1-2 Wigan aet (FA Cup)
Wigan 2-1 Northampton
Barnsley 0-1 Wigan
Wigan 0-0 Nottm Forest u21s (Wigan on pens) (EFL Trophy)
Wigan 0-1 Wycombe
Carlisle 0-2 Wigan (FA Cup)

Town are 5th in the League One table with 29 points. Wigan are 15th with 20.

[theo_luddite]

Good one again Snoots.

Marshall, Hodge and Lonwijk are here for the season, whether there's a recall clause in January, I wouldn't know.

Weather report from The Great White North.

Like back home, temperatures headed south during the last week, though unlike back home they stayed at or below freezing with a nose numbing windchill factor to boot. We finally got a couple of flurries during the last few evenings, but it wasn't even a dusting. Unlike a tad further north and south of here. They got 2 feet of flurries or, the big dump they've been waiting for in a couple of hours.

Meanwhile in Buffalo - this lad's got his work cut out to get the stadium ready for this afternoon's game and he's still got the upper bowl to clear. You'd a thunk he'd a started up there at the back rather than the lower bowl at the front.



You don't want to know how cold it is in Alberta. Minus something and frozen to death doesn't cover it. Fly back tonight so all bleary eyed on the tube and trains back to Wolvo tomorrow afternoon. Good job I haven't missed anything important.

You don't get UK footy for "free" (if you call an exorbitant price for Interweb and Cable TV every month "free") on the tellybox over here anymore. You need another subscription to get Prima Donna League, another to get Chumpionship and any potential other EFL games like ours and another one to get FA Cup Games. Guess I might have to take a boo at that VPN Town keep advertising for next year.

[ritchiebaby]

Good thread, Snooty, but I must pick you up on your Shaun Maloney biography. He only lasted 4 months at Easter Road and was sacked in April 2022, continuing a Hibs tradition of not giving new managers a chance to get bedded in and build their own teams.

And thanks to theo for reminding me of what real snowfalls used be like in the (good?) old days.

[Lord Snooty]

Thanks Ritchie. I must've misread his Wiki stats. A season and a half really is a long time for a Hibs boss. Shudda known.

[Lord Snooty]

Good news/bad news......

Good. Pearson not as bad as thought. Back training already.

Bad. Miller out for 4 months. Healy out for 6 weeks.

[Lord Snooty]

Balker and Sorensen are back in full training as well.

[jjamez]

Thelo lord of asgaard seems to have been on the score sheet a few times recently, he'll operate in the attacking midfield slot.

If I remember back to our championship days, he was fairly tall and looked good on the ball, if a touch lightweight

[Lord Snooty]

TOWN’S TEAM vs WIGAN ATHLETIC (H)

13. Jacob Chapman
5. Michał Helik ©
7. Callum Marshall
8. Ben Wiles
10. Josh Koroma
16. Herbie Kane
18. David Kasumu
20. Ollie Turton
23. Nigel Lonwijk
25. Danny Ward
32. Tom Lees

SUBSTITUTES

Chris Maxwell; Josh Ruffels, Matty Pearson, Jonathan Hogg, Bojan Radulovic, Brodie Spencer, Freddie Ladapo

[themaclad]

Zilch all at half time can see Latics sneaking this

[theo_luddite]

Not a right riveting watch for the first half, but Wigan don't seem to be as up for it as Tamworth either (so far).