Shaun Maloney earned a point in his first game as Wigan produced one of the goalless football scores of the weekend in the Championship. The Latics wasted the opportunity to move up from the bottom of the Sky Bet Championship, but Maloney, a former player who took over as their third permanent manager of the season last week after Kolo Toure was fired, thought it was a promising start. On another painful night for Jon Dahl Tomasson and his team, they are three points short of safety in 24th place and Blackburn is still outside the top six on goal differential.
Blackburn found a way in behind his team’s defense in just four minutes, making it the worst possible start for Maloney. Brereton Diaz raced through on goal after Bradley Dack threw the ball into his path, but he shot straight at Ben Amos with just the goalie to beat. Sorba Thomas was one of the loanee debutants on display, and he caused Blackburn plenty of problems down the right, with a few of his crosses really testing the Wigan defense. However, Martin Kelly displayed his sharp thinking by deflecting the threat away from players like Bradley Dack and Sam Gallagher.
In the end, neither team would get a breakthrough in this Lancashire derby since neither team played well in the final third of the game. In addition, Kelly had a setback because he had to leave the game with what appeared to be a serious injury after giving an outstanding performance on his Wigan debut.
“We anticipated that the game would be difficult. Wigan has a new management and is in a life-or-death struggle. Despite this, I’m disappointed that the opportunities we produced didn’t help us win the game,” Blackburn manager Jon Dahl Tomasson said. “We were strong without possessions and gave away very little. Although I’m pleased with the clean sheet, we must use our opportunities more strategically.”
“It’s a good beginning. In the second half, we had to defend a lot. The group’s mentality was excellent. I’m happy,” Wigan manager Shaun Maloney said. “I was pretty happy with how we were progressing in the first half. That had some good moments.”
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