Preview: Manchester City Vs Wigan Athletic

Manchester City continued their FA Cup run, recently beating Aston Villa to book a Quater-Final against West Ham United at home. The game will be played on the monday after Saturdays game, so Wigan will hope that City has one eye on the Quater-final when we keep off at 3:00pm tomorrow.

Andy Cole: Scored winning goal agaisnt Wigan in FA Cup

It was an exciting game at the JJB Satdium on boxing day last year, when Wigan edged a seven goal thriller 4-3. Wigan rushed into a 4-1 lead before holding on for dear life after City closed the gap, and so City will also have revenge on their minds.

One thing's for sure, even if City are distracted by their FA Cup exploits, Wigan will have to be at their best as City's home form has been fantastic of late, the victory over Villa was their seventh consecutive victory at home.

Wigan's assistant manager Chris Hutchings is expecting another exciting clash: "We've had two good games against them. We beat them here at the JJB and then got beat 1-0 in the cup at their place. It will be an interesting game because we are in similar positions in the table."

Both Wigan and City harbour ambitions of making a last push towards a UEFA Cup spot and both clubs admit that they must win on Saturday to keep the dream of European football alive.

When quizzed on the possibility of Europe, Hutchings said: "I'm sure thier manager (Stuart Pearce) will be setting the target of Europe,and so will we." He added: "That is now our target, to get into Europe. We have had a fantastic season and to go one better and finish in Europe would be a wonderful end to the season."

Of course, Wigan have the fair play league to fall back on if they fail to

Connolly: Pushing for a place on the bench

qualify for Europe through the league. The Latics are 12 points clear at the top of the fair play league which, ironically, Manchester City finished top of a few seasons back and qualified for Europe through that.

On the injury front, Wigan Athletic have no fresh injury scares. Only Mike Pollitt and Ryan Taylor are out of the reckoning for tomorrows clash, although both have started training again. David Connolly made a goalscoring comeback in the reserves humbling of Manchester United, and will be pushing for a place on the bench. Alan Mahon, Andreas Johansson and Reto Ziegler will all be pushing for starts after also scoring for the reserves.

Despite a poor performance against Sunderland, Wigan are expected to field an unchanged side.

Manchester City will be without Andy Cole, the scorer of the goal that knocked Wigan out of the FA Cup. Slyvian Distin is struggling to shake off a virus and Joey Barton is struggling with a knee problem. Greek striker Samaras in expected to shake off a dead leg to be fit for the game.


Ones To Watch

City have a lot of promising youngsters breaking into their team. Micah Richards has a fantastic leap and will be dangerous from set pieces, and if fit, Samaras will prove a handful for Scharner and De Zeeuw. If fit, Joey Barton will have to be kept a close eye on, as he ran the show for City at the JJB Stadium back in december.


Pundits Predictions

Sky sports have gone for a 4-2 home victory to City, saying that their strikers will run amock. Sky sports are not to be taken very seriously as they hardly ever get scores correct when predicting Wigan games.
Everyones favourite pundit Mark Lawrenson has gone for a more realistic draw, also pointing towards City being distracted by their upcoming Quater-final.


My Predictions

City have a superb home form, but their track record of winning a game then losing a game means that Wigan should win this one. However this is not the case when it's Wigan playing! Hopefully City will be distracted and that Wigan can capitalise on this.

A Distracted City means: Latics 2 City 1

A city not distracted means: Latics 1 City 1