Latics diary: It was nice while it lasted, The big question

Just 21 days ago, I wrote on these pages that Latics could mount a promotion play-off challenge with the remaining fixtures – that the players were good enough, that the club was entitled to think of itself as a future League One outfit.

Three defeats later – 3-2 away at Barnet, 0-3 against Cambridge United and Saturday’s 3-0 hammering away to Swindon Town – have proved me wrong. Instead, Latics are now contemplating an extended run-in with nothing to play for. An automatic promotion play-off chance was dead before Cambridge gave Latics a proper footballing lesson at Boundary Park. A play-off position was possible before Saturday’s shellacking in Swindon. But no more.

Professor James Reade has laid it out in stark terms: to achieve 71 points – the historical average number of points accumulated by the team in the final play-off place in League Two – Latics need two points per game. They were nowhere near that in the first half of the season.

It could have been so different. The defeat away at Barnet was a kick in the teeth. Latics were miles the better side but came away with nothing after a defensive blunder and a freak goal. Such is life. But the comprehensiveness of the two subsequent defeats signalled to even the most hopeful fan that the promotion challenge is over. The gulf between Cambridge and Latics, and between Swindon and Latics, is just too vast to cross this term.

For two seasons in a row, Latics have woefully underperformed in the second half of the season. They have remained where they are, toddling along, while everyone else steps up their game, every game, with their season’s objective on the line as soon as the ref blows the whistle.

What the fans deserve is an adventurous side who battle, who score goals, who are resolute in defence. They know promotion isn’t happening this season, but they want their team to animate the league, upsetting teams above them and handing out beatings to the ones below. They want to know that this side – the management and the players – can step up when they need to next season. In fact, the players need to convince themselves that they can compete when the intensity ramps up.

THE BIG QUESTION

The big question hanging over the club this season – it’s still there, and gets bigger and bigger every day – is whether Micky Mellon will be manager next season. Because the club’s public relations strategy is never to tell anyone anything about the club or the

people who run it and play for it, we have to indulge in what was known in the cold war as Kremlinology.

(Kremlinology was the study of the general appearance, gestures and behaviour of senior Soviet political figures – who sat next to whom at the state dinner, who was on the outer edge of the annual Politburo photograph, ready to be erased when the time came, and so on.)

To the uninitiated, the transfer window, and particularly the signing of Calum Kavanagh from Bradford City on a two-and-a-half year deal, indicated that Micky Mellon is staying. However, the window as a whole is more plausibly attributable to the recruitment department, or the club as a whole, and does not answer the question of Mellon’s managerial tenure one way or the other.

The farming out of Will Sutton to Solihull Moors, and of Kian Harratt to Brackley Town, raised expectations. The two incoming loanees – Kane Taylor from Aston Villa and Fábio Jaló from Barnsley – hinted at an attempt to bolster the squad for a play-off push, replacing tired legs with fresh ones in midfield and up front.

The pièce de résistance, however, was selling Joe Quigley to Bristol Rovers for what is understood to be a six-figure sum. Quigley was an uninspired signing in the summer, and enhanced that reputation in his short time at Latics. He’ll be remembered for his miss from a couple or three yards against Chesterfield – the game finished 0-0 – on new year’s day more than he’ll be remembered for any goal he scored or any other contribution he made. Online, many hundreds of Latics fans offered to pay his taxi fare to Bristol.

It was brilliant business, showing that the “back end” of Latics’ recruitment department – the stats people and the scouts – can work well in conjunction with a football management team used to doing things their way. The club as a whole manifestly improved the squad while operating on a neutral budget, which is extremely promising for the long term.