DEFEAT BY LATICS

THEY DID IN FIRST

The fact the right flank is now the issue despite having naturally-footed first-choice players available on that side is a concern. Every time the ball went anywhere near Danny Simpson, Wigan manager Paul Cook would scream to his players to press, press, press.

Though defensively solid, the right-back had clearly been identified as a weakness in Town’s build-up play. We have known that for most of the season, but when Simpson was brought in it was to solve very much the opposite problem: Hadergjonaj was fully mobile and relatively able going forward, but left a gaping hole behind him that teams quickly learned to exploit repeatedly.

As we found here, both issues can be just as damaging to a side’s chances if the opposition learns how to punish them.

Duhaney offered a bit more on the ball when he came on, and having praised the right-back’s work in training over the last few weeks, we wonder if it’s worth giving the youngster a go from the start against Nottingham Forest on Sunday to see if he can help find a balance between those two extremes.

That game at the DW Stadium changed when Mounie was brought on with half an hour to go and Grant shifted out to the left. The Cowleys did not have the luxury of making that change on Saturday, with unused substitute Collin Quaner the next-best alternative to Mounie but Elias Kachunga was instead preferred as an analogue to Campbell.

Enough personnel have changed and improved since that frustrating draw in December to make it understandable they thought things might be different, but as it turned out they were merely repeating the same mistake under similar circumstances. That is very uncharacteristic of them.