Are Wigan Athletic the Ultimate Houdini Club?

It's happening again. Wigan Athletic are hitting form just as everyone wrote them off and gave them no chance of staying up in the Premier League going into spring.

Once again, Roberto Martinez has got his highly unfancied side into form just when the foot was down and they needed results to stay up. Big wins against Manchester United and Arsenal have given them the edge in the race to stay up.

Wigan must surely be the least fashionable club in the Premier League. Their fanbase is easily the smallest in the Premier League and Wigan is hardly a must-see destination in England. In fact, the town halfway between Crewe and Liverpool has always been more well-known as a rugby league town rather than a football town.


However, when they were promoted back in 2006, Wigan were the first of a new breed of Premier League clubs that includes the likes of Stoke City, Norwich, Swansea, West Brom and most likely, Reading next season - they don't spend beyond their means to stay up but they invest in building a squad that has very good team spirit and plays a positive type of football. If they get relegated, it's not necessarily the end of the world. But at least they're going to play football in the right spirit.

Roberto Martinez's already-glowing reputation will surely be advanced further should Wigan pull off yet another remarkable escape from the drop. I quite like Martinez and am glad he is enjoying the success he has had in the Premier League. I'm sure he will end up at a bigger club in the future but for now, he is enjoying guiding the likes of Gary Caldwell, James McArthy, Conor Sammon, Victor Moses and el-Habsi to another unlikely survival.

Wigan's more illustrious team, Wigan Warriors RLFC

Perhaps next season, Wigan could finally establish themselves as a mid-table club under Martinez a bit like what Fulham have done in recent years. It would certainly enhance football's standing in this rugby league hub of the world if Martinez's men can build a heritage that future Wigan followers could talk about especially with bigger and more illustrious fellow Lancashire rivals, Bolton and Blackburn, set to fall out of the Premier League this season.