Source: Telegraph
Wigan Athletic 1 Stoke City 1: match report
No quaretr given. Few Premier League fixtures are as unfashionable as a Stoke City visit to Wigan Athletic on a cold Tuesday night, but perhaps no game sums up the league quite so well. Gritty, scrappy, exhausting. It may not have been exotic, but this was blood and thunder at its very best. [LNB]The details of the performance are almost incidental, so forgettable was much of the play. Paul Scharner headed Roberto Martinez's side ahead, Tuncay drew Tony Pulis's men level after the break. But it is the bruises and the breathlessness that will endure. [LNB]On the surface, Martinez and Pulis could not be more diametrically opposed. The former, although he forged his reputation in the lower leagues here, represents continental sophistication, complete with immaculately tailored trousers, dapper overcoat, brown winkle-pickers and passing philosophy as espoused by most in his homeland. [LNB]Pulis, on the other hand, is seen as utilitarian, the artisan merely doing whatever it takes to survive. Stoke play the most rudimentary football, damning the aesthetes, an attitude betrayed by Pulis's tracksuit, his cap, his discomfort in the limelight. [LNB]Yet a common strand links them. In a game which, at times, was played with the sort of ferocious intensity more familiar with the rugby league which had done so much to cut up the pitch at the DW Stadium, it was not immediately obvious which side were the long ball brutes and which the fleet-footed artists. [LNB]Both sides, packed with power, hared into tackles, charged forward, chased back at a fearsome tempo. Wigan and Stoke alike have their maestros - Tuncay for the visitors, Charles N'Zogbia for the hosts - but what they possess beyond all else is pace. Sheer, blistering pace. [LNB]It is the trait both Pulis and Martinez prize above all else as they look to keep their clubs, overpowered financially by most of their rivals, competitive in the Premier League. [LNB]Little wonder neither side found a moment's respite. Hugo Rodallega was only denied a clear opening by a cynical foul from Ryan Shawcross before Scharner, the exception that proves the rule, nodded home N'Zogbia's free kick. [LNB]First blood to Wigan. Stoke roared forward, their hosts pounced on the break. Tuncay was twice denied, once by a Gary Caldwell trip, once by Chris Kirkland. Scharner almost added a second, flicking another N'Zogbia set-piece inches wide. [LNB]There was clearly no call for calm heads from either manager at the break. Rodallega went close with a stunning overhead kick, skimming the roof of the net with Thomas Sorensen watching on, and Kirkland denied Ricardo Fuller, as the furious, fierce blows kept landing. [LNB]It was the hosts who staggered first as the weariness set in. Fuller charged forward, the ball broke to the impressive Etherington and his cross picked out Tuncay, unmarked in the box. A moment later, the visitors turned the game on its head, Mamady Sidibe heading against the bar after Fuller teed up another Etherington cross. [LNB]Stoke spurned another chance to earn a rare away victory in injury time, Kirkland's reactions denying James Beattie. [LNB]
