AFCB highly pressed by well drilled Wigan team

Wigan's victory was earned in part to some early high pressing at times. It is a game plan that was successfully employed by Blackburn when they came to Dean Court as well. The Cherries have not coped so well in such instances, but they will have to improve that against Championship sides who will play that way against us if they see it as a weakness.

AFCB did not cope well with Wigan's early pressure.

There was more to Wigan's win though than that, because for a lot of the match AFCB took the game to Wigan and the possession indicates that the home team did not have everything there own way. But still, AFCB had an off day and that is costly. Eddie Howe was clearly disappointed: "They did not really open us up too much after the first 10 minutes, but still I feel there is a lot to work on from our perspective, definitely in terms of keeping the ball today, because that has to be, with the way we play, our forte and today we just slipped off our high standards we set," he said. 

"I think today you saw a team that was well short of what it can deliver," he added. "It's a reminder that we need to be at our best and that we can't carry four or five who have off days."

You don't hear such comments from Eddie Howe very often and the manner of this defeat was perhaps more unexpected than most. Coming off a good Christmas period Wigan was a tough place to go to. I do feel that AFCB fans have to stop and think and give Wigan a lot of credit because the way they played on the break and hurt AFCB was class.

Reading FC tried in vane to batter Bournemouth when they were at home but came up short and Brighton equally failed to get through or around AFCB's defence with as much ease as Wigan were able to. But in these earlier matches AFCB did not give the ball away in such dangerous areas. The team came off the successful blueprint yesterday that had served them so well in previous away matches and by falling short of those performances Wigan were well able to make the most of their opportunities.

I suspect that Burton will not look to press so high up the pitch on Tuesday. It will be down to AFCB to create and stretch Burton's defence and it should be a very different kind of test. UTCIAD!