Shoddy Shotton: Defender encapsulates Wigan Athletic’s failures against Rubin Kazan

Rubin Kazan vs Wigan Athletic

Wigan Athletic manager Owen Coyle gave credit to his players after seeing them lose a Europa League Group D contest he felt they at least deserved to draw. The only goal of the game at the Central Stadium came in the 22nd minute when Oleg Kuzmin latched on to a lofted ball into the area and cracked it home, giving 21-year-old goalkeeper Lee Nicholls virtually no chance, securing Rubin’s qualification to the knock-out rounds in the process.

Key Stats:

The scoreline from the game represents exactly what happened throughout the 90 minutes, it was very much a game of two very prominently opposite statistics. Many would label see Rubin as the stereotypical ‘tough, Eastern European away trip’, because that’s exactly what it is – fans will remember Chelsea and Levante among other clubs finding it very tough to go to Rubin and get a result. Wigan, on the other hand, obviously didn’t pay attention to any of this talk as they dominated large parts of the game, this is shown by Wigan (13) having more shots on goal than Rubin (12) overall.

Although the Latics may have had more attempts on goal, Rubin dominated possession (58%) on their home turf.

Man of the Match

In a match where not one player stamped their authority on the game, our Man of the Match award has been presented to the sole goalscorer, Oleg Kuzmin. The 32-year-old played very attacking but very defensive when needed at the same time. Alongside Kuzmin’s goal, he dominated the right-hand side of the pitch and limited the threat of James McClean up Wigan’s left wing by making two interceptions and an 100% tackle success rate, therefore preventing McClean from doing the damage many England-based journalists know he can do.

As well as Kuzmin doing his job on his right-hand side of the Kazan defence, he also slotted in at centre-back on multiple occasions to help out with his centre defensive team-mates. As you can see from the screenshot below, the former Lokomotiv Moscow wing-back made over half of his interceptions (4 out of 7) in the right centre-back role. Without these interceptions, Wigan may have stolen a goal and therefore at the very least, a point.

Performance Score

The Performance Score from both Kazan and Wigan exemplifies why this game was very strange in they way in which one side dominated possession, but the other dominated shots on goal. The Performance Score graph shows how Rubin’s level of performance continually rose while the visitors’ remained relatively static. This shows that Wigan never fell away but never stepped up and attempted to make something of their spells of dominance. From looking at the performance score graph alone, you’d think this game ended 4-0 to Kazan and not 1-0.

“In our first foray in European football, I think this was an outstanding performance – we looked like a very mature European team and I was delighted with them. My only disappointment is to leave with no points, because we certainly deserved to take something from the game,” commented Coyle after the game.

This backs up the Performance Score graph by Coyle exaggerating that he Latics should have gotten something out of the game due to the amount of shots the English side had.

Key Observation

Although Wigan had many shots on the Rubin goal, they could have had many more if the Championship side’s had completed more than the 225 out of 322 passes they attempted. The worst culprit of Wigan’s appalling passing was Ryan Shotton whose passing accuracy stood at a dire 57%, this, for one of the Latics’s attacking full-backs, isn’t good enough and shows that if their passing was slightly more accurate, it could possibly have led to a point from a very tough game.