James Heneghan's Wigan Athletic v Northampton Town preview

Date/time: Saturday, August 12, 3pm kick-off

Venue: DW Stadium

Forecast: 20C, showers

Outs and doubts: Wigan: Josh Magennis, Jason Kerr. Cobblers: Shaun McWilliams, Harvey Lintott, Ben Fox, Ryan Haynes, Danny Hylton, Tyler Magloire.

Betting: Wigan 2/1, draw 5/2, Northampton 11/4

Form guide: Wigan DW, Cobblers LL

Current league positions: 24th v 17th

Possible line-ups: Wigan: Tickle, Clare, Hughes, Morrison, Pearce, Smith, Aasgaard, Humphrys, McManaman, Lang, Wyke. Northampton: Burge, Sherring, Guthrie, Monthé, Odimayo, Brough, Leonard, Sowerby, Pinnock, Hoskins, Simpson.

Man in the middle: Ross Joyce. If that name’s familiar to Cobblers fans, it’s because he was the referee who sent off Aaron McGowan seemingly for daring to stand in the vicinity of Jack Roles against Crawley Town last season (video above).

Last time out: Wrexham 0 Wigan 0 (Wrexham won on penalties); Swansea 3 (Piroe 2, Ginnelly) Northampton 0

Most recent meeting: February 9, 2021, League One – Northampton 0 Wigan 1 (Lang). This game was notable for the fact it proved to be Keith Curle’s final match in charge. He was replaced the following day by Jon Brady, initially as caretaker manager and then on a permanent basis.

Record v Wigan Athletic: P36 W6 D12 L19

Opposition view: "I’ve watched them a couple of times and they’ve done both things. I watched them against MK Dons in pre-season and then against Swansea in the week where they were aggressive and went to press high up so we have to prepare for both scenarios. I thought Wrexham would be more aggressive than they were but I’ll prepare for both. We have to play under pressure when a team comes to high press us and what we found out against Wrexham is that when a team doesn’t press us, we still have to be patient and then there needs to be change of speed and mentality in the final third. These are the things we need to work on.” Shaun Maloney, Wigan Athletic manager.

What Jon Brady said: “They’re a very good side and to get the result they did at Derby gives them a strong start to the season. But we’ll go there to be organised and to play our game and we believe we can be very competitive in the game. We were scrapping with them to stay up the last time we played each other and in the time since they’ve been up to the Championship and come back down and we’ve gone the other way. They’ve recruited well and they have a strong group of players but we’ll have good support and we want to make sure we reflect that and give them everything we’ve got."

Prediction: Wigan 1 Northampton 1