Turn automatic updates on or hit F5 to refresh. Email evanfanning@gmail.com with your thoughts, musings and reasons why tonight’s game will prove the Premier League is the best league in the world
40 min: Wigan launch another dangerous counter-attack as McCarthy breaks and NZogbia picks it up. Carragher comes across to hack it into touch, which is about what Liverpool have been resorted to
39 min: Now we have the first Wigan yellow card for a really bad tacjkle by Bramble on Torres. He completely missed the ball and took Torres’ ankle. That’s what Titus is good at
37 min: It’s all Wigan now. Liverpool look totally chaotic. No one seems to be able to put their foot on the ball and take the sting out of it.
36 min: Gary Naylor has nailed it. “Never mind which Liverpool players are chocolate bars, aren’t the club as a whole Cadbury’s? Long tradition rooted in their local community, suddenly bought by Americans seemingly hellbent on throwing away the legacy much to the chagrin of customers and employees? And there seems nothing anyone can do to stop them. Cadburyworld is a lot more welcoming than Anfield though, at least to the likes of me. And Rafa is not so much a Wonka as a W(snip).”
Goal! Wigan 1-0 Liverpool (Rodallega 34) Dirk Kut gives the ball away 18 yards from his own goal. Boyle picks it up and crosses with the ouside of his right-foot to Rodallega who scuffs his left-footed shot and it trickles past Reina and over the line
32 min: Kyrgiakos has now got his customary yellow card for a quite impressive foul on Scharner on the halfway line.
30 min: Gerrard knocks a simple ball straight out of play which leads to one of the most over-used phrases in football: ‘Steven Gerrard is having an unusually off night’
8.31pm: “Good point in the preamble about Liverpool playing in the equivalent of the graveyard shift although it did get me thinking about your predicament,” writes Paul Simpson. ” Are you the Liverpool of the MBM’ers, currently seventh and having to work a dull Monday night game from Wigan all the while hoping that a good performance will move you up to fourth, even if only temporarily until Bandini or Glendenning MBM their game in hand?” The short answer to that is Yes.
27 min: Another yellow card this time for Lucas for a trip on wing wizard Titus Bramble
25 min: Great chance for Liverpool and it comes from lovely play from Benayoun. He jinked down the right-hand side and crossed towards Gerrard who couldn’t connect. The Liverpool skipper then tried to shoot as he got up off the ground but it was so poor it didn’t even reach the goalline from eight yards
23 min: Meanwhile back at the ranch Wigan are doing pretty well. The game is pretty frenetic and the pitch is holding up quite well. Mascherano fires in a great ball from the right but Benayoun can’t connect
22 min: “If Rafa Benitez was a chocolate bar, he’d be some sort of chocolate covered pork scratching,” says Colin Greer. “I don’t know if the Scots have invented that yet – but that’s what he’d be.” The Scots really are at the forefront of artery-clogging food development. God bless ‘em.
21 min: Insua gets a yellow card for a foul on England’s Charles NZogbia in the centre circle
19 min: … which Rodallega curls over the bar. Bryun is still awake and seems to have more than sleep on his mind. “MMmmmmmm I dont know about the rest of Asia getting behind the Premier League……but I could knock a few old ladies up, so to speak and ask them to cheer.” Should Bryun go and round up a few ladies to follow the game? I think the answer is yes
18 min: Charles NZogbia – who can now play for England it would seem – destroys Insua down the left but Carragher scrambles his cross clear. Lucas then blocks Rodallega and Wigan have a free right on the edge of the area
15 min: I can’t even begin to describe how ridiculous a corner Wigan have just given away but fortunately for them the world’s worst corner taker is over it and as usual fails to clear the first man
14 min: “Trying to both write my dissertation and read your MBM is definitely not going to get me my degree but come on the Mighty Reds (even if we are more plucky than mighty this season),” writes Cormac Hayes whose brain cells must be diminishing by the second. I know mine are. See aformentioned coffee machine battle for full details
12 min: James McCarthy, who turned down Liverpool to sign for Wigan in the summer, goes on a good run but Carragher brings it to a halt. N’Zogbia then twists and turns in the area but Moreno can’t get on the end of his cross with the goal gaping. That was a good chance for Wigan
9 min: Wigan attempt a swift counter-attack after Maxi’s volley is charged down but Insua gets back to take it off Rodallega’s toe. NZogbia then puts Boyce in down the right and his cross is headed behind by Krygiakos. They make a total hash of the corner
7 min: Gerrard’s corner is cleared as far as Maxi who heads to Torres unmarked in the area. He volleys from a tight angle and it comes off the outside of the post and goes behind. Good chance for Liverpool
5 min: Something about the presence of Fernando Torres suddenly makes Liverpool look like a team who can do things like pass the ball and run fast. It’s totally different to the side who laboured to wins a few weeks ago without him. Benayoun cuts in from the left but his shot, which was going miles wide, comes off Caldwell and goes behind for a corner
3 min: Early pressure from Liverpool as Mascherano crosses from the right. Wigan manage to clear it as far as Gerrard who shanks his shot high into the stand as is his wont. “If Aquilani was a chocolate bar he would be a Marathon. Much missed but no where to be found,” reminisces Ian Copestake. It’s still there Ian. They just call it Snickers now
2 min: Kuyt has started just behind Torres with Maxi on the right and Benayoun on the left. “First Barney with his half-time Toffee Crisp, now you with your Bounty and your chocolate bar analogies,” bellows Justin Kavanagh. “This is a London-based, minute-by-minute conspiracy to remind me that I can’t eat chocolate any more, isn’t it? I think Senor Benitez will find, though, that it’s his team that resembles the Bounty Bar—looks like a solid enough chunk of choccy on the outside, but is actually full of flakey stuff on the inside. And it comes in disjointed pieces.” Justin, I think you might need help.
1 min: Andre Marriner blows his whistle and we’re underway. Liverpool, all in red, playing from left to right. Wigan going the other way, but you knew that
Breaking pitch news It’s been relaid since the last match here and so looks like one of those pitches you would have drawn as a kid (or as a grown adult if that’s your thing) when you went through all the green markers you could find so it looked like a patchwork quilt.
“Forgot to mention that I am in Thailand, not that that should make answering my dilemma any easier for you, its all highly irrelevant in the long run but I thought I would keep you well informed,” says Bryun again. “Now if I had a Bounty bar to look forward to at 5am (when the game finishes) I might be tempted to stay the course. Alas, coconuts everywhere but not a Cadburys in sight.” Now you definitely have to stay with us. If people in Asia don’t get behind this league, it might never take off
No time for more chocolate bar analogies, but I did just lose a battle of wits with the coffee machine which should be considered a new low if there were not so many, many others. “Its 3.00am here and I dont know whether to sit up and watch the football or merely read your report tomorrow morning,” ponders Bryun. “What do you suggest ? Will you be okay if I pretend to read for awhile and then dose off into the balmy night or should I be polite and announce my departure early doors ? What a malady.” Stay up Bryun. You owe us that.
Preamble Nothing emphasises Liverpool’s current predicament more than the fact that they now play the majority of their games in football’s equivalent of the graveyard shift – Thursday night – Sunday afternoon – Thursday early evening – Monday night.
And like the man on the night shift who refuses to eat his Bounty bar until 5am as it gives him something to look forward to, Rafael Benitez believes the large parts of the season the likes of Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard, Yossi Benayoun and Glen Johnson have missed will give his side the edge in the home straight.
Tonight they travel to the mud bath that is the DW Stadium where they face a Wigan side without a win in the league since November. Benitez has told Alberto Aquilani that he has not been forgotten about and to prove his point he’s left the £20m man on the bench – alongside the returning Johnson – even though Javier Mascherano is once again starting at right back.
Team news in full:
Wigan: Kirkland; Boyce, Caldwell, Bramble, Figueroa; Diame, McCarthy; N’Zogbia, Scharner, Rodallega; Moreno.
Subs: Stojkovic, Amaya, Thomas, Scotland, Moses, Gomez, Sinclair.
Liverpool: Reina; Mascherano, Carragher, Kyrgiakos, Insua; Lucas, Gerrard; Maxi, Kuyt, Benayoun; Torres.
Subs: Cavalieri, Johnson, Aquilani, Agger, Riera, Babel, Ngog.
Referee: Andre Marriner (W Midlands)
More match build-up and chocolate bar analogies before the 8pm kick off
Premier LeagueLiverpoolWigan AthleticEvan Fanningguardian.co.uk
