There are two matches left in the Sky Bet Championship prior to Christmas and the first of them come along on Monday night when Kolo Toure has his first home match as Wigan Athletic manager when they host Sheffield United.
The Latics go into the contest second from bottom in their first season back at this level and they host the team who are second from the top so the early season form would suggest an away win but this is the Championship and form rarely counts for anything in this league!
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Football channels with the build-up at the DW Stadium beginning at 7.30pm and kick off taking place at 8pm.
Wigan Athletic
Wigan started their first season back at this level is very positive form but suddenly things came to an abrupt halt and they head into this match having won just one of their last nine matches and they have slumped from just inside the top half of the table to second from bottom. This league is very tightly bunched though and a win for the Latics here would shift them up four spots and ease their immediate troubles heading into Christmas.
There will be plenty of attention on Wigan in this match. Kolo Toure was a high profile appointment and this will be his first game in charge on home soil and in front of the TV cameras and there will be plenty ready to judge. Toure got off to a fair start with a draw at Millwall last week and now they will be looking to build on that. Goals were becoming a problem prior to his appointment so it will be interesting to see if the African can get his side to become a force at the top end of the pitch once again.
Sheffield United
I think when the season was about to start the consensus was that anyone who finished above Sheffield United would either win promotion or be very close to doing so and as we approach the halfway point in proceedings that is certainly how things look to be playing out. The Blades are second in the table and in truth only Burnley are looking like they have the better of them. There is still a long way to go though so United have to keep on winning.
The Blades go into this match having won five of their last six either side of the World Cup so they will be making the trip across the Pennines in good form even though they had injuries galore at various different stages of the season. Sheffield United kept four clean sheets in those six matches but won three of them 1-0 so if they can improve over the second part of the campaign it would be to find a second goal and make things more comfortable for themselves.
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Team News
Will Keane returned to the starting XI for Wigan Athletic last weekend and he is expected to spearhead the attack for Kolo Toure in this match. Ryan Nyambe Jason Kerr and Tom Pearce are all missing for Toure’s first home game.
Sheffield United are going to be without their longer-term injury victims Rhys Norrington-Davies and Rhian Brewster for this match. Jack Robinson is a doubt as well but Billy Sharp could be involved once again.
Betting
Sheffield United are warm favourites for this match and based on the season so far that is extremely justified but they have only had one match since the World Cup break and they weren’t completely impressive in their 1-0 win over a pretty abject Huddersfield Town side so I’m not rushing to back them at odds on. I don’t really want to oppose them either though so I’ll head to the player markets for a punt on this one.
Wigan have made a lot of noise in the lead up to the game that they aren’t going to sit back and be attacked so we should see them take the game to their more illustrious opponents here and that might allow top scorer Will Keane to do some damage. He scored against Millwall last week and has eight goals overall. The 4/1 on him to score is tempting but he can drop a little deep to get clear cut chances so I would rather play the 5/6 that he has a shot on target and the 4/1 that he finds the net.
Tips
Back W.Keane – Over 0.5 shots on target for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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