Championship 2018/19: Swansea City vs Wigan Athletic

The games come thick and fast at the end of the calendar year and this provided both Swansea City and Wigan Athletic an opportunity to get back to winning ways after Boxing Day defeats.

In this Championship tactical analysis, we’ll look in detail at how Wigan Athletic ended a four-match goalless streak as well as Swansea City manager Graham Potter’s mistakes with his team selection and formation choice and how they recovered in the second half.

The Latics took an early lead from the penalty spot after just 10 minutes. The build-up to the spot-kick being awarded summed up Swansea’s first-half performance: disorganised, disjointed and pretty much clueless.

Graham Potter gets it badly wrong with a 3-5-2

Swansea City manager Graham Potter has regularly experimented with his first-team selections and formations this season, switching between three key systems: 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1 and back-three variations.

Against Wigan, it was one of those back three variations. After another ineffective performance however, you wonder if Potter will focus more on using a back four for the remainder of the season.

It was brave to adopt wingers Dan James and Wayne Routledge as wing-backs. Potter later took full responsibility of his side’s first-half performance, admitting he got it wrong and how he almost made a substitution before half-time.

We will look in more detail as to why the system simply didn’t work in this tactical analysis.

Wigan, meanwhile, adopted a 4-1-4-1 system, the same that Aston Villa used in their narrow 1-0 victory at the Liberty Stadium on Boxing Day.

Wigan’s 4-1-4-1 defensive shape

As Graham Potter expected, Wigan’s 4-1-4-1 defensive shape packed the central areas. The Swansea manager later explained that the use of wing-backs was a ploy to get the ball wide and attack down the wings.