As we attempted to get back into our stride, we nipped across the Pennines to Pie City, AKA Wigan, and, despite taking the lead just after the half hour, looked defensively shaky at set pieces and were pegged back just before the break. Awful marking allowed Wigan to score the crucial second, and we’d lost two in a row to make automatic promotion wishful thinking. In our own hands? I’d rather it was in someone else’s – which it is now. I apologise in advance for massive gaps in the following assessment of the evening’s work, as the internet was playing silly buggers and simply refused to allow me to watch only a series of two minute excerpts interspersed with either a frozen screen or the video feed running at treble speed to catch up while the commentary, when it worked, being frequently several minutes out of synch with the picture.
The thing about this season’s crowded fixture list is that, in the event of something going wrong (like Saturday’s reversal), you get the chance to put things right pretty quickly. The coming week was always going to be a bit of a season-definer, with the three away games including one against league leaders Hull, one against in-form Blackpool, and tonight’s against Wigan, who whupped Donny’s ass at the weekend. Having just about admitted that he’d got Saturday’s starting eleven wrong, Lee Johnson shuffled his pack again, opting for pace in the form of Jones, Diamond, and Hume and basica