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MOTD- Wigan Athletic 2-3 Swansea City

By on May 7, 2013

Swansea have stolen a valuable three points from a desperate Wigan Athletic at the DW Stadium, with Roberto Martinez’s side set to be relegated to the Championship. Wigan almost had a nightmare start when Roger Espinoza gave the ball away to Wayne Routledge with a slack pass back to goalkeeper Joel Robles, but luckily for Espinoza, Routledge could only direct his shot into the side-netting. The Lactics were soon dominating though, and Swansea spent much of the first ten minutes of the match back in their own half. Swansea goalkeeper Michel Vorm saved Arouna Kone’s long range shot in the eighth minute, before Robles strangely picked up Gary Caldwell’s back-pass in the fifteenth minute. Ashley Williams smashed the resulting indirect free-kick from eight yards out over the bar, giving Wigan a lucky break.

Wigan kept much of the possession, but despite Shaun Malon’s menacing free-kick from twenty-five yards out dipping into the hands of Vorm in the forty-first minute,a largely forgettable first half looked to end 0-0. But, just before the end of the half, Wigan deservedly took the lead with the last kick of the half. Emerson Boyce laid it off to Ben Watson on the right, who beautifully curled a deep cross to the far post, which Vorm punched away. The ball fell to Espinoza on the edge of the box, and the Honduran hit a low first time volley that screamed by the bunch of Swansea players on the goal-line into the back of the net. The goal was the last kick of the first half, which ended 1-0.

Swansea upped the tempo in the second half by a lot, and the Swans amazingly found an equalizer only four minutes into the half when Routledge brilliantly chipped the ball above the Wigan defense to the run of Angel Rangel down the right side of the box. Rangel wonderfully volleyed it to the far post, where it hit the inside of the post and bounced back across goal, squeezing it’s way into the back of the net. Amazingly, Wigan retook the lead within two minutes when James McCarthy latched on to Maloney’s through ball, before tidily slipping it past Vorm into the back of the net from the edge of the box.

The match was incredibly open, and Swansea wasted only six more minutes before equalizing in the fifty-eighth minute after Caldwell gave the ball away in a promising position. It fell to Pablo Hernandez, who one-touched it to Itey Shechter, and although the forwards’ first touch deserted him, a mix-up between Wigan defenders allowed him to pull a fierce shoot off from the edge of the box. The shoot took a slight deflection off a Wigan defender, and whizzed into the corner of the net. Wigan were amazingly denied a third goal in the sixty-eighth minute, with Vorm incredibly blocking Caldwell’s header from a corner. Wigan pressed the self-destruct button in the seventy-fifth minute, allowing Swansea to take the lead. The Lactics failed to clear a cross allowing Hernandez to curl another cross to the far post from the left, and another horrible miscommunication saw two Wigan players failing to clear, letting Dwight Tiendalli to volley into the back of the net. Kone fired wide in the ninetieth minute, but Roberto Martinez’s side failed to grab a crucial equalizer, and after eight minutes of added time the match ended 3-2, with Swansea completeing their comeback.
Man of the Match: Michel Vorm

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.