Wanderers 4 Wigan 0
8:20am Monday 15th March 2010 in Latest
IT was a day of surprising firsts at the Reebok — from Fabrice Muamba’s wonder strike to the maiden penalty of Kevin Davies’s 17-year professional career.
It is also the first time Owen Coyle can look towards next season confident he will be managing a Premier League football club.
Footballing courtesy will prevent the Wanderers boss from declaring his team safe until it is mathematically right to do so, but with an eight-point gap now opened up between themselves and the bottom three, it is going to take something special to haul them back into the mire.
That this derby result came off the back of a terrible result at Sunderland made it all the more impressive.
Nine points from the last 12 available can be considered a season-saving return, and while tougher tests are looming on the horizon, it is going to take a comeback of epic proportions from Hull City, Burnley et al to put the skids under them once more.
Coyle might now allow himself a few thoughts on summer rebuilding, although thanks to Johan Elmander’s return to form, a goalscoring centre-forward might not be the urgent requirement it looked a couple of weeks ago.
The Sweden international has looked a different prospect since returning from international duty with a stunning goal against Wales under his belt.
Buoyed by his manager’s belief that his fortunes would change in a club shirt, the club-record signing is starting to show signs of coming to terms with the physical nature of English football — and it was from his hustling that two of Wanderers’ four goals were scored.
The elusive goal arrived inside 10 minutes but not before Wigan were deprived a penalty by referee Mike Dean for a cumbersome challenge by Zat Knight on Hugo Rodallega.
Roberto Martinez moaned that things might have panned out differently for his team had the Whites’ defender been pulled up for his foul on the Colombian, but with his own centre half Gary Caldwell in amikaze mode all afternoon, the result would not have been much different.
Elmander’s goal owed much to Kevin Davies’s belligerence on the edge of the box and, when the ball bounced loose, the £8.2million hitman capitalised on Caldwell’s indecision to slide a low shot under Chris Kirkland for his third league goal of the season, and his first since December.
The Wigan defender made partial amends a few minutes later in clearing Davies’s header off the line under pressure from Andy O’Brien. But that was the extent of his positive input as the Latics would find out to their cost later on.
Jussi Jaaskelainen had remained a virtual observer for most of the first half, yet the Finn showed expert reflexes to push aside Charles N’Zogbia’s shot just before the break.
That proved to be the visitors’ last chance to haul themselves back into the game — and five minutes after the restart, Wanderers had made it two.
Tamir Cohen was felled by an ungainly challenge from Caldwell inside the box, and, with Matt Taylor off the pitch, the responsibility to take the penalty fell on the broad shoulders of Davies for the first time in his career.
The 32-year-old skipper did score from the spot in a pre-season friendly at Eindhoven, but he looked as if he had been taking them all his life as he stroked the ball in with minimal effort.
Paul Scharner narrowly missed out on halving the deficit when he failed to get a telling touch on Rodallega’s cross — and his profligacy was punished quickly, albeit through the most unlikely of sources.
Few expected Muamba to get a shot on target, let alone a goal, as he collected the ball on the right from Chung-Yong Lee.
And but for a few ironic calls to shoot from the terraces, not many would have wagered on the end result even after he turned Caldwell inside out to get a clear sight of Kirkland’s net.
But the finish was that of a player brimming with confidence, and it was with a mixture of surprise and unadulterated joy that he sprinted to the dugout to celebrate with Coyle on the bench.
The fourth arrived via another Caldwell error, allowing Taylor, just on as a substitute, to nip in and produce a finish every bit as smart as the one that went before, especially given it was on his un-favoured right side.
Scotland international Caldwell had 20 more minutes to endure, or at least to find a hole on the Reebok turf to swallow him up, but aside from an acrobatic effort from sub Ivan Klasnic, the Whites merely cantered to the finish.
Complaints? Well if there were any, it was that Wanderers did not go on to get a fifth goal against a side that were clearly there for the taking.
The last time they scored five in a league game was on their very first day back in the big time, when Leicester City were memorably put to the sword at the Reebok.
But this latest victory goes a long way to making sure that a 10th straight season will be spent in the Premier League. And not for a long time has that felt more certain.
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