In 2013, something extraordinary happened: Wigan won the FA Cup.
In the same season, something less than extraordinary happened:Wigan were relegated.
This is the story of that bittersweet year and a club who defied expectation.
Wigan won promotion to the Premier League in 2005, finishing second in the Championship
and taking their place in English football’s top-flight for the first time in their history.
It fulfilled a promise. Ten years before, in 1995, Wigan’s very existence had been in question
as they languished near the foot of the Football League. But they would be bought
by Dave Whelan and with a pledge to deliver Premier League football within a decade.
Whelan was a former professional footballer.
He played for Crewe and Blackburn and famously suffered a broken leg in the 1960 FA Cup Final.
By the mid-90s, he was the owner of one of the country’s biggest sportswear brands,
JJB, and his patronage would help Wigan ascend through the divisions until, under manager Paul
Jewell and after a 3-1 win over Reading in May 2005, they barged into the big time.
Jewell had already authored one unlikely success story.
He’d been in charge of the Bradford City team that won their improbable promotion to the top-flight
in 1999. Even more impressively, he’d managed to keep them there for more than a season.
Still, Wigan’s 2005-06 campaign was miraculous. It was a team of unlikely, unheralded players,
including a young Leighton Baines, the cultish Jimmy Bullard, livewire forward Henri Camara
and gnarly Football League veterans like Lee McCulloch and Graham Kavanagh, but they were very
successful. Between August and November they’d win eight of nine games, including six straight, and
they’d end the year in 10th place having beaten Manchester City and Aston Villa home and away,
West Ham and Everton on their own ground, and having achieved all sorts of creditable results.
It was never that good again. For most of the next six years, Wigan would fight
manfully against relegation – their survival bid would really become an annual event.
Jewell would remain at the club until 2007, but in 2009, after Chris Hutchings
and Steve Bruce had been and gone, Swansea manager Roberto Martinez was appointed.
Martinez was an interesting character. As a player, he had been an unlikely part of
Swansea’s initial bounce off the bottom of the Football League and, as a coach,
he was similarly incongruous, preaching possession football, patient build-up and back-threes
where, previously, pragmatism and 4-4-2 had been the default.
He would lay the stylistic foundations for what Swansea would become in the Premier League
and he would make no ideological compromise at Wigan, either.
The club’s recruitment reflected that over the years as they cast their net far and wide. Jordi
Gomez would sign from Espanyol in 2009, Paraguayan Antolin Alcaraz joined from Club Brugges a year
later, and Arouna Kone was recruited from Rayo Vallecano in 2012. All three would play in the
FA Cup Final, and they would be joined by other astute signings made over the years.
James McCarthy and James McArthur moved south from Scotland, so did Shaun Maloney,
and Crystal Palace midfielder Ben Watson moved north from south London.
Those were some of the successes. There were plenty of misses around those hits, though,
and – between 2009 and 2013 – Wigan was a place of flux
and a club with a fluid squad. In those four years, 39 players joined the club and 61 departed,
not including loans. Their side was often a continual work in progress.
But it was testament to a strange sort of success. Martinez was sufficiently admired to be approached
by Aston Villa and Liverpool during his time at the club. He turned the former down and the latter
opted to appoint Brendan Rodgers instead, but it was a measure of his performance in its context.
And Wigan were producing valuable players, too. Over the years, Leighton Baines was sold
to Everton, Wilson Palacios to Tottenham, and Antonio Valencia to Manchester United.
Charles N’Zogbia would also join Aston Villa and Victor Moses would move to Chelsea.
Successful players would leave, new, often unheard-of ones would take their place,
and Wigan and Martinez would do just enough to survive. One season followed another. By 2012-13,
though, that routine had become more tenuous. In fact, the league campaign was a disaster.
Martinez’s side would win just five times before the turn of the year
and from December onwards they’d spend just a single week outside the relegation zone.
A valiant comeback away to West Bromwich Albion in May left them with hope, but a bad collapse
at home to – of all teams – Swansea, left them needing to beat Arsenal away to survive.
It was really a season without momentum. And yet, at the same time, Wigan were progressing
smoothly through the FA Cup. Bournemouth and Macclesfield were beaten in rounds three and four.
Huddersfield and then Everton were well-beaten away from home in rounds five and six,
and when goals from Maloney and the dynamic, academy-grown winger Callum McManaman were
enough to beat Millwall at Wembley, little Wigan were through to face Manchester City in a final.
Not that they were given much hope. At Wembley, they would face a team
that included Sergio Aguero, Carlos Tevez, Yaya Toure and Vincent Kompany.
If Wigan could keep the score respectable, then that would be a worthy consolation.
But they’d do more than that.
Martinez and his players had a gameplan for City. They were a cosmopolitan hodgepodge of
abilities with nine different nationalities in their starting eleven, but they were resilient.
Without the ball they’d sit deep and defend compactly. When they’d recover possession,
they’d look to spring forward, using the pace of McManaman and Kone to
attack in twos or sometimes threes, if Maloney could get up in support.
And it worked. They withstood pressure and goalkeeper Joel
Robles made excellent first-half saves from Tevez and Samir Nasri,
but Wigan were in the game and they had plenty of possession and just as many good chances.
McManaman saw one shot go just past the post and another blocked at close range.
In the second-half, McManaman would change the game for good,
drawing two bad tackles from Pablo Zabaleta and two yellow cards. With six minutes left,
Roberto Mancini’s team found themselves down to ten men. And in the first minute of stoppage time,
that advantage told. Substitute Ben Watson met Shaun Maloney’s corner at the near post
and his header flashed across Joe Hart into the top-corner, sending one half
of Wembley delirious and the Wigan players into a celebratory pile by the corner flag.
With one of the biggest shocks in its modern history, Wigan were FA Cup winners.
And then, just three days later, they’d become the first winners to be relegated
in the same season. Finalists had been relegated before, but never a winner. They actually took
the lead at the Emirates against Arsenal – and for a while a second miracle in a week
looked possible - but the hosts responded with power and would end up winning 4-1,
bringing Wigan’s time in the Premier League to an end.
And they haven’t been back since.