Wigan out of luck after Leicester ring the changes
Wigan have thrown FA Cup banana skins in the path of Bournemouth, West Ham and Manchester City in recent times but were unable to impede Leicester’s progress into the fourth round, despite a 10-player rotation of Brendan Rodgers’s squad.
The Championship club could count themselves a little unlucky, though, not to have made their opponents’ ride somewhat less comfortable on an evening when, by Rodgers’s admission, the Premier League team were below par.
Behind to an own goal, they conceded a second before half-time to a deflected Harvey Barnes shot while they had a man down injured, and just when they seemed to have given themselves half a chance to force a replay with a goal 17 minutes from the end, in stepped VAR to stifle their enthusiasm.
Substitute Jamal Lowe volleyed home Tom Pearce’s cross only for the goal to be ruled out after another agonisingly marginal offside.
“Even though it was a tough task for us, given that we’ve conceded two scruffy goals from our point of view, we are disappointed we’ve not gone through,” Wigan’s assistant manager, Leam Richardson, said, adding that his bench were disappointed that Leicester did not stop playing when Joe Williams was in obvious difficulty in the lead-up to the second goal.
“They might argue that we had a couple of passes in the play that followed [the injury] but we’d kicked the ball out of play in an earlier incident when Wes Morgan went down.”
Rodgers assessed his side’s performance with an air of relief that things had gone in their favour as they prepare for Wednesday’s EFL Cup semi-final first leg against Aston Villa.
“We’ve seen in the last couple of seasons what Wigan can do and for us to get through was very important,” he said. “But we know we can play better. The players worked hard but we were not good enough on the ball.”
Wigan, who made six changes, went behind after 19 minutes when debutant defender Pearce tried to cut out Marc Albrighton’s pass to Barnes as Leicester broke but sent the ball into his own net.
They survived when David Marshall saved from Barnes at close range but suffered misfortune again for the second Leicester goal. A man down with Williams grounded at the wrong end, they raced back to cover a Leicester break but now it was the turn of another Wigan defender, Chey Dunkley, to curse his luck as his attempt to block the shot only took the ball out of Marshall’s reach.
Leicester lost Wes Morgan (groin) and Filip Benkovic (knee) to injury, although neither were likely to have been starters against Villa. There is better news of Jamie Vardy, who is back in training and available for selection.