By Darryl
August 11 2006

Pre season friendlies, you gotta love ‘em. You use them to get your players fit for the new season and they all start getting knocks. Gary Teale’s out til the Pompey game at least according to his highly paid specialist. Hopefully Luis Valencia will be have his work permit by the Newcastle game and will slot in straight away, scoring a hatrick on his debut and setting up Heskey and Camara with a couple of goals a piece. Perhaps that is a little optimistic of me, I’d just settle for him setting a couple up.

Heskey and Landzaat both limped off at the Halifax game but they were taken off as precautions. Mike Pollitt got jumped by the goalposts at Barnsley. You gotta watch those goalposts at Barnsley, nasty little buggers they are. Thankfully Pollitt managed to escape with just a couple of stitches. Still on the bright side Pollitt, Heskey and Landzaat will be fit and raring to go for the new season.

The Jewellster is trying to tempt Big Duncan Ferguson out of retirement if you go by some of the websites. Big Dunc in a Wigan shirt. I wonder how that would sit with Paul Scharner. I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall at their first meeting if it comes off.

Shefki Kuqi is also rumoured to be interesting The Jewellster. I’ve got a lot of time for Shefki Kuqi. He’s a bit like Jimmy Bullard. Both ugly buggers, not the most skillful players in the world but they’d both run all day. The difference being Shefki would run around like a headless chicken chasing after defenders and goalkeepers to hassle them into making a mistake whereas Jimmy would just run around like a headless chicken.

Rumour has it Wigan are also after Fernando Ricksen of Rangers. To be honest I know nothing about Ricksen, but he’s in trouble about something at Rangers supposedly and Paul Le Guen has told him to find another club. He sounds like one of those players that everybody says “you got a troublemaker there” and PJ sorts ‘em out. You know the type. That’s what everybody was saying about about Roberts, Camara and Connolly when they joined. However if you go by the website PSV want to take him back to Holland. If he does sign I hope he’s better than that other Rangers player Wigan signed, Darius Adamcuk wasn’t it?. Didn’t he bugger off soon after signing?

Apparently Wigan have backed down over Chimbonda. If you go some by some sites PJ has said he’d settle for a deal worth just over £5 Mil, £3.5 Mil up front, another £1 Mil after 50 games and another £750,0000 if they qualify for Europe next season. Shame, he should’ve stuck to his guns. Still, it’s still a bloody sight more than we paid for him.