Martinez hoping to bring flair to Wigan

17 September 2009 14:20
Wigan manager Roberto Martinez has lofty ambitions to make his side play the Barcelona way. Despite the obvious disparity in respective budgets and squads the Spaniard sees no reason why his players cannot adapt to a more fluid and entertaining style. He has gradually moved the Latics away from the more pragmatic approach under former manager Steve Bruce and hopes to see a noticeable change in the next month or so. Wigan will get a chance to see the purest form of the game up close on Saturday as they travel to Arsenal, generally accepted as the club who play the most attractive football in Britain. And although Martinez was keen to stress he does not want to copy the Gunners or reigning European champions Barcelona, he does want to play the best football they possibly can. "You are looking at teams like Arsenal, Barcelona, those are the sides who rely on themselves," he said. "They are arrogant on the ball and that is something I like in my teams. "We are starting to rely on ball possession, we control the ball and we normally have more possession than the opponents and that is a good sign. The better you control the ball the more chance you have to dictate results and that is the way I like to approach games. "Every squad of players is different and every player has different strengths so it would be a big mistake to try to emulate someone. We need to be as good as we can with the way we are but the concepts are quite clear. We are not a strong team, we don't have a target man or play percentage football. We don't want to chase the chance to score, we want to find it. We are going to keep the ball, be in control of our possession and that is something we can do with the players we have got."

Source: Eurosport