Up for Wigan

Wigan have added a bit of guile to their side in Koumas, although he has struggled at the top level in the past. Sibierski has never really impressed me and he lacks pace.
I think to get some joy out of this game we need to stretch Wigan and make sure we take advantage of our pace. Wigan are a very physical side and they will be looking for joy from set pieces and long ball tactics. It is crucial, as in all games that Everton are alert and strong at the back, and when we get the ball we look after it well. The quality in our midfield should be more than enough to frustrate Wigan but we just need to play good football and not allow ourselves to get involved in a slugfest, which would suit Wigan down to the ground. Johnson wil have to work hard as always to exploit the space in behind their defence and I would go with McFadden to add a bit of pacy support up front.
I am confident we have the beating of Wigan if we hold our concentration. I am going to predict a nice Everton win at Goodison to start the season.

3-0

3-1. Wigan to get relegated.

Wigan have had a really good pre-season. They have won all of their six matches and the addition of Brown has added a bit of bite to their midfield. Chris Hutchings feels very confident that his men can come away from Goodison with all three points.
I believe if this happens, we will only have ourselves to blame. The opening game of the season is always a massive game and if we are anything less than 100% fired up and concentrating, any team in the Premier League is capable of punishing us. We need to close down and work hard obviously when we don't have the ball, but our choice of passing has to be spot on. I think trying to pass through the midfield will just not work and we need to look to get possesssion out to our wide men who hopefully will be Arteta and McFadden. If we can make Wigan turn and face their own goal at every oppotunity then we should be able to get a win out of this. Man for man, we are the better side just now on paper.

Am very confident that we will get 3 points from this encounter. Just hope we can get a comfortable win.... 3-0 will do just fine, or maybe 4-1. Got a feeling that we will score more than once.

Well, we won and that is the important thing. It is nice to have finally beaten Wigan at Goodison Park in the Premiership and having watched them today I do think they will be going down.
However, we were guilty of the classic Everton thing of giving ourselves problems when there didn't need to be any. In general, Everton were the better team and Wigan relied more on strength and physicality than any sort of imagination. We played the better football and Arteta was magical at times with his skill.
It was brilliant to see two local, homegrown players on the scoresheet and I thought Leon took his goal with great composure, a lot of players might have made a mess of that.
However, having got ourselves seemingly home and dry we went and conceded what looked like a very preventable goal and this makes me worry. Concentration is key for Everton and players have to see out a full 90 minutes. We got away with it today, but as I have said, Wigan are just not that good a side to be able to exploit opponents' weaknesses like others may do in the future.
Still we made good use of our pacy attack and exposed Wigan enough to get the win. So, the bottom line is, we have three points

And if it wasn't for this then we could of finished 3rd last season.