PhilGibson

Lose tonight and then I shall mostly be concentrating on the world cup to come. Chelsea sewn up the league with Portsmouth to come in the FA cup final, Spurs and Man City to battle for fourth with Man City coming out on top, and Villa finishing 7th or 8th.

How very interesting? Martin has proven us wrong before and we have come out in the second half all guns blazing and won, I just hope we can do it again tonight. Please keep my interest in the season for at least one more week!

Spurs must be loving it, Portsmouth in the semis of the cup and then Portsmouth at the weekend in the league when all your rivals are dropping points.

The ball is at present in their court.

PEN, really really need to put this away.

This looks like an end of season meaning less game, like both teams are mid table and it does not matter. Except for it does, sort it out at half time Martin, we look so pedestrian.

I reckon we are lulling them into a false sense of security, they will believe we can be that average again in the final and we will come out all guns blazing.

Well I can hope thats the case anyway.

I will tell you something we are now bloody tough to beat.

Sidwell is so bad.

I think there is a conspiracy theory to keep Liverpool in 4th place, nobody wants it. What a boring game, jesus we look knackered.

The difference between us and Arsenal is a truly world class player in the middle of the park namely Cesc Fabregas. He is just pure quality the little shit!

I bet Sir Alex is slightly jealous of our centre back situation. Oh what he would give to have 4 quality centre halves fighting for a place in the team. Shame.

Anyway Davies has quality that I am sure as he matures and reaches his peak over the next few years we will benefit from.

That an Amari hotel? Looks similar to the one on Koh Chang.

No mate, it's the Hilton at Hua Hin.

I went there on my honeymoon back in 2007, very nice hotel.

I have not seen the game so cannot comment on the performance with my own eyes, but from the sounds of things Martin has made some bizarre moves again today. He really does move in mysterious ways, one day he gets it absolutely right against Liverpool at Anfield and then a few weeks later we go to Blackburn and he brings on Heskey for Delph after starting the game 4-4-2 with Petrov in a midfield 2. This formation has not worked since the beginning of 2009 but he continues to push it.

Absolutely bizarre. Chelsea losing 3-1 to Wigan! Today is a very strange day!

I realise you can only beat the team in front of you, but we look very assured in that first half. Just dispatched them without getting into 3rd gear. If we can continue with that sort of form in the second half this "could be" our most comprehensive win for a while.

Blackburn Away in the league after this one if we can get the maximum amount of points from these two games then we go into the home games against Man City and Chelsea with some good form. Happy days!

They are playing better than us so far, but with no end product thankfully. We need to step it up.

beye must be injured

Either that or Martin is having one of his confused playing players out of position moment again. Although with Beye not even being on the bench he must have a knock surely!

Beye is on the bench.

Substitutes

26

Gardner

22

Guzan

21

Shorey

10

Carew

23

Beye

16

Delph

18

Heskey

My mistake thought I saw he was not. Very strange choice then.

beye must be injured

Either that or Martin is having one of his confused playing players out of position moment again. Although with Beye not even being on the bench he must have a knock surely!

Journalists on the Sunday Supplement are about to talk about Villa and Oneill. SS1.

Well the camp is certainly split 2/3 for him staying 1/3 want him gone.

The next few weeks are going to be crucial.

Vienna trip on Thursday, Liverpool on Monday, Fulham at home on the following Sunday, Transfer window ends on 31st and then two weeks later a trip to Blues. If we dont get a result against Fulham and the blue noses then the knives almost certainly will be out (rightly or wrongly) Martin has always said he is in the results business and they have not been good enough over the last 6 - 7 months.

Martin O'Neill pulled no punches after seeing his side lose to Wigan, insisting: "We simply weren't good enough."

O'Neill accepted Villa were second best all afternoon as goals from Hugo Rodallega and Jason Koumas consigned his claret and blue troops to an opening day defeat.

He said: "I am disappointed more than frustrated. You can be frustrated if you feel you deserved something out of the game. But we didn't. After an initial 15 minutes, we were second best all afternoon.

"You can analyse everything but at the end of the day, we looked tired, which was a bit of surprise considering we had a good pre-season.

"But I'm not going to make excuses. We were beaten today. We should have been ready to go. It was very disappointing indeed.

"We were loose everywhere - we weren't good enough.

"The fans will be disappointed with the performance. People have mentioned the absence of Gareth Barry and Martin Laursen. This is a new team - we have to be ready for that.

"We were good enough last season to overcome a lot of hurdles on our way to finishing sixth and that's what we intend to do again."

The Villa boss also revealed he was not surprised by Wigan's impressive performance.

"They didn't surprise me at all. They have performed very well in all the pre-season games I have seen them play.

"They hit the post with one of their attacks and they gained great confidence from that. We lost composure and they scored a wonder goal. Even at half-time I thought we would get back into it but we just weren't there today."

MON Wigan Reaction

What the hell does he mean its a new side besides Delph & Beye who is new? Delph is going to be a good player I am sure of that but to expect him to come in straight away and perform on the premier league stage is expecting too much.

Martin mentioned in a recent interview that the team had lost its heart without Barry and Laursen and he is right. Now just bloody do something about it!

It's the booing during the game that i am referring too, not after the final whistle, you can't have an impact on the result then.

Thats fair enough and I agree that the booing during the game is counter productive. The fans in my opinion are right to show dissaproval after the game.

I do not think you can compare your line of work to that of a footballer (unless you are one of course!).

People criticising other fans booing seems weird to me after that performance. If we had put in the fight and gone down with some real effort then fair enough. But that was a truly abject performance that cannot be excused, if we cannot 'boo' the players when they play like that then god knows what the world is coming to.

I understand the arguement that it cannot help but the fans and the players are there to lift each other. If they dont show the effort and application then why should we. What should the reaction have been after the game today? Polite applause? A rousing cheer? or walk away quietly?

It was as bad a performance I can remember under Martin and he probably knows it as well.

Carew is not on the pitch because he pulled out during the warm up so he is not even on the bench.

Oh well we never beat Wigan at home anyway.

How was that not a free kick for Carew!

Carew really cannot be arsed today.

Vargas I think his name is the no. 8 for them is seeing a lot of the ball. Looks a good player.