By Tom Bason
October 2 2010

Wow. What to say about this game. An early red card cost Wolves dearly and they succumbed to a 2-0 defeat at the DW Stadium.

Firstly, Karl Henry's an idiot. I defended him following the Newcastle and Fulham matches, but I can't condone today. To make THAT challenge THAT early in THAT part of the pitch was just plain stupid. Had Jordi Gomez have had both feet planted on the ground it's likely he'd now have a broken ankle at best. I don't know why he made that tackle- you'd have thought he'd want to spend a few games with his head down following his recent bad publicity and it's highly likely he'll now be on every referee's hit list. Maybe he needs the three games off to get his head together, and now the likes of David Jones, Michael Mancienne and maybe Nenad Milijas will have the chance to cement their place in the starting-11.

Yet, despite being a man down, we defended reasonably well. Until half-time we restricted Wigan mainly to long range shots that were easily dealt with. It was easy for us to switch from 4-3-3 to 4-4-1 (see here) with us defending deeply with two banks of four, and not pressing Wigan until they got to within 40 yards of our goal. They had very little idea of how to break us down and were restricted to long range shots that were easily dealt with by Marcus Hahnemann. When they did manage to get the ball wide and to the byline, Jody Craddock and Christophe Berra were there to head the crosses away. At half time we were fairly comfortable at 0-0, and had even managed to make the odd attack our self.

Wigan changed their system slightly at halftime, pushing Hugo Rodellega further forward to support Franco Di Santo, effectively limiting their man advantage. They played a higher defensive line and pressed higher up the pitch making it more difficult for us to retain possession. At this point Stephen Fletcher was withdrawn for George Elokobi, an indication that we would take the 0-0. Wigan then made a very interesting change, bringing on Ronnie Stam for Maynor Figueroa and moving to three defenders. Previously, their fullbacks had been attacking, meaning they had 8 players going forward against our 8 defenders. When they withdrew Figueroa, they effectively had three defenders at all time, whose only opposition was Kevin Doyle. At this point we had 8 defenders against their 7 attackers and I began to believe we might escape with a draw.

Then, a free kick on the edge of the area, sweetly struck into the top corner by Gomez. I'm reluctant to criticise Hahnemann due to the pace of the ball but it always frustrates me to see a keeper take a step towards his near post just as the ball is being struck. From that close, it was very unlikely that Gomez would have managed to lift the ball over the wall and got enough dip to hit the target. Hahnemann should trust his wall to do its job (admittedly not easy after the pathetic wall at Fulham) and concentrate fully on not being beaten on his side.

So, 1-0 down with a man sent off. Mick chased the game, off came Dave Edwards and Stephen Ward for Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Marcus Bent. Now we were playing a 4-1-4 formation with Mancienne in midfield, Kevin Doyle and Matt Jarvis out wide and Ebanks-Blake and Bent through the middle. Unsurprisingly, we suddenly looked to have more man power upfront, but we were caught out as Rodellega got in behind our defence and Berra's challenge was unlucky to bounce off Rodellega's boot and past Hahnemann. 2-0, game over.

Random thoughts

- Not sure if I mentioned this early, but Karl Henry's an idiot

- Stephen Ward started as a striker- why's he on the halfway line for corners?

- Marcus Hahnemann's kicking is poor, so why do defenders continue to pass the ball back to him?

- Kevin Foley was excellent at 0-0, but faded towards the end

- Kevin Doyle will sleep, sleep, sleep tonight, he never stopped running

- I'm actually starting to prefer Elokobi to Ward at left back, this shows how much Ward is currently struggling

- Our results are on a downward slide- win the opening game, draw the next two and lose every game since

- We will always struggle with a man sent off due to our very high energy strategy- the players were running on empty at the end

- Last season McCarthy got his tactics very wrong at home to Wigan following the sending off of Richard Stearman, today he didn't do much wrong but we still finished with a 2-0 defeat

- With games against Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal to follow, next weeks match at home to West Ham is massive

- We are now in a massive relegation scrap, and could well be bottom by time we play Bolton at home in mid-November