Roberto Martinez is a man who’s been mooted for the Aston Villa managers job seemingly annually in recent times. According to Wigan chairman Dave Whelan though, we’re not big enough a club for Martinez, despite having a stadium twice as big as Wigan’s and winning a bunch of FA Cups, League Cups, League titles, oh, and a European Cup.
Still, that’s water under the bridge, as it seems Martinez himself does actually love the Villa, when you read what he said in his pre-match press conference this week.
“We wanted Aston Villa to have a very strong ending to the season,” said the Wigan manager. “The reason for that is I don’t think it would be healthy for any of the teams to go into the final game of the season as a final, a showdown, where one of the teams has to get relegated. I think that would be very dangerous.”
Errrr, by our calculations, Wigan’s best hope of survival was Sunderland to beat Villa 6-1 on Monday and have Villa limp along to the DW stadium to be picked off by Wigan in a ‘showdown’ last game of the season.
Regardless, it’s nice to hear Martinez – at least in public – rejoicing in Villa’s 6-1 drubbing of Sunderland.
“As it stands now I think it shows the fight goes a bit further than two teams,” continued the Wigan manager, in his press conference. “I think that is only a positive for every team involved in that. It is great for us that the fight to avoid that third place is more open than just two teams.”
Well, to be honest, Wigan with five games in the space of 15 days (including a cup final), have their work cut out. They’ll need a minimum of four points from their next two games – West brom (a) and Swansea (h) – just to realistically stay in the survival battle.
I hope they win their FA Cup final against Manchester City, but they may need a bigger miracle than that to stay up. UTV
Follow MOMS on twitter at @oldmansaid
Follow MOMS on Tumblr
