Malky Mackay had no excuse for friendly banter after Wigan lost 1-0 at home to Huddersfield. It was their seventh defeat in 10 Championship games that have produced a single win since he took over as manager. In that time they have also gone out of the FA Cup at the first opportunity. Two years ago they were in the Premier League and on their way to lifting the Cup for the first time. And Mackay was leading Cardiff into the Premier League for their first time in the top tier in 51 years.
The concurrent declines of Wigan and Mackay have been almost lost in the verbal reasons for them and the attendant furore. Dave Whelan, Wigan’s chairman, is serving a six-week ban from the club that, next month, he will have owned for 20 years. Mackay, whose appointment unwittingly led to Whelan’s exile, left Cardiff 16th in the Premier League and after 11 months in limbo, has Wigan worse off than he found them, when he succeeded Uwe Rösler. Wigan were 22nd then, one point from 21st, four from mid-table. Now they are 23rd, five from safety, and the last ties with their heyday are breaking.
The descent began the week after the Cup triumph, when they were relegated. The following month their manager of four years, Roberto Martínez, left for Everton. Last week, too late for the programme, Ben Watson, scorer of the Cup final goal, and Shaun Maloney, their player of that year, bailed out to Watford and, barring hitches, Chicago Fire. Callum McManaman, man of the match at Wembley and vigorously courted, seems certain to leave this week. That will leave only Emmerson Boyce, the Cup final captain, of the 12 who played. At 35 he was on the bench on Saturday.
McManaman did play at the DW Stadium – if the FA allows it to be so called in its punishment of the owner – but, apart from one lightning cross, looked happy to rest on noted laurels and avoid injury; he lasted 65 minutes before a calf tightened. The game was still goalless then, though Huddersfield had enjoyed the better chances, two in close order before half-time. Sean Scannell on the right gave Andrew Taylor a torrid time and his cross called on Liam Ridgewell to help out his keeper, Scott Carson, and block James Vaughan’s shot on the line. Then Wigan’s Martyn Waghorn, back for a corner, cleared Mark Hudson’s header likewise with a standard post-man’s nod.
In attack, though, Wigan barely tested Alex Smithies, though the Terriers have conceded 45 goals, equal most in the division before Blackpool’s rout at Watford. They were helped by the loan last week of David Edgar from Birmingham, the one in Huddersfield’s 4-1-3-2. James McClean, once an exciting wing at Sunderland, and Waghorn, ran relentlessly but are makeshift central strikers for Wigan after Rösler’s summer signings there did not work out. One, Oriol Riera is on loan at Deportivo. William Kvist was a terrier himself in midfield but the team lacked conviction to go with their spirit and Conor Coady’s late goal, curling like a rainbow out of nothing from wide left to top-right corner, was a delightful, cruel blow.
“It’s fine lines,” Mackay said, “and it’s been fine lines for the past few weeks. We’ve not been torn apart by anyone. I’ll go back in there on Monday and make sure we train with enthusiasm. It’s disappointing to lose to what looks like a cross.” Chris Powell, his opposite number, hardly hiding a grin, said: “It was a cross-shot and sometimes that’s what happens.”
In programme notes more thoughtful than ritual, Mackay welcomed Powell as “my very good friend, a terrific guy. Chris and I go back a long way; he’s an old team-mate at both West Ham and Watford.” If there was any doubt about his sincerity, it was banished after six minutes when banter broke out on the touchline. Mackay whacked a ball back to the thrower beyond the visiting dugout, testing Powell’s agility. The shared laughter should put a lid on the whole protracted hoo-ha.
Similarly Whelan’s achievement in a rugby league stronghold should not be obscured if this is the end of his club’s golden era. They entered the League in 1978. In his 20 years he has taken them from dilapidated Springfield Park to the finely appointed DW, from fourth tier to top and from an average crowd of 1,750 to 20,600 in their first of eight years in the Premier League, when they finished 10th. It is now 12,785. On this day Huddersfield, also a rugby league town, were no giants and it was not enough that Wigan were simply warriors.
