Defeat is not so tweet for Stoke City's Jermaine Pennant
Wigan Athletic 2 Stoke City 0
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Your support makes all the difference.Jermaine Pennant is likely to be hauled over the coals by Stoke City manager Tony Pulis today, after tweeting his displeasure at playing out of position in Saturday's 2-0 defeat at Wigan.
Pennant told his Twitter followers: "I can't score a free-kick if there isn't 1 around the box and I played bloody wing back today I've never ever been a full back in my life."
Wigan's manager, Roberto Martinez, a veteran of such situations, expects the battle for survival to go down to the final day of the season. It had looked inevitable for much of the campaign that the three relegated clubs would come from a bottom five of Wolves, Wigan, Bolton, QPR and Blackburn, but all except Wolves have begun to pick up important results.
Martinez, having guided his team to their first home win in seven months thanks to goals from Antolin Alcaraz and Victor Moses, said: "The other results are going to be like this until the end of the season. We've been in this situation before and we know [in] the last seven or eight games of the season the bottom five are going to pick up a lot of points and there's going to be many twists and turns.
"You can only control your own fate. We need to have as many points as we can when 13 May arrives."
Match details
Wigan: AL HABSI 6/10, CALDWELL 7, ALCARAZ 7, FIGUEROA 7, BOYCE 6, McCARTHY 7, McARTHUR 7, BEAUSEJOUR 7, MOSES 7, DISANTO 6, MALONEY 6
Stoke: BEGOVIC 6, WILSON 5, HUTH 5, SHAWCROSS 5, WILKINSON 5, ETHERINGTON 6, WHELAN 6, WHITEHEAD 5, PENNANT 5, WALTERS 5, CROUCH 5
Scorers: Wigan Alcaraz 54, Moses 90. Substitutes: Wigan Watson 5 (Maloney, 70), Gomez (Di Santo, 82), Sammon (Beausejour, 87). Stoke Jerome 5 (Etherington, 49), Fuller 5 (Walters, 65), Palacios (Pennant, 65).
Booked: Wigan Beausejour, Boyce. Stoke Wilson, Whelan, Whitehead, Wilkinson.
Man of the match Beausejour. Match rating 8/10.
Possession: Wigan 56% Stoke 44%.
Attempts on target: Wigan 11 Stoke 2.
Referee M Clattenburg (Tyne & Wear). Att 19,786.
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