Rewind the clock by 14 years and Arsenal were travelling to the DW Stadium to take on Wigan Athletic on Saturday 3rd December 2011. We had just come off the back of two disappointing home results, drawing 1-1 at home to Fulham in the Premier League, before a late Sergio Aguero strike eliminated us from the League Cup. Such results were a feature of what had been a challenging start to the 2011/12 campaign, following an early season injury crisis and the departures of Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri. Fortunately for us, Robin Van Persie was propping up the team, scoring 10 times in 5 consecutive victories in the autumn period to leave us sixth in the table heading into this game. Meanwhile, our opponents Wigan had just secured a first win in 10 Premier League games through Franco Di Santo’s stoppage-time winner at Sunderland, but Roberto Martinez’s side remained marooned in the bottom three.

Despite our superiority in this contest, it took until the 28th minute to open the scoring. Having joined us three months earlier from Everton, Mikel Arteta rifled home from distance with a goal that opened the floodgates for the rest of the contest. A minute later, it was Thomas Vermaelen’s turn to strike as he netted his second goal in as many weeks, having scored the equaliser against Fulham on the previous Saturday. The Belgian went on to score six Premier League goals that season, with his early years at Arsenal certainly marked by an eye for goal.

A 2-0 lead against a lowly opponent was always likely to see us to victory, however memories of two years previously would have still lingered in the minds of players and fans alike. Wigan famously turned that two goal deficit into a 3-2 victory in April 2010, scoring three times in the game’s final 10 minutes. A second defeat in four days saw our title hopes evaporate as Chelsea went on to pip Manchester United, with us finishing a distant third. On this occasion though, it was business as usual, with Gervinho and the ever reliable Van Persie adding second-half strikes to complete a convincing win. We would only go on to face the Latics three more times in the Premier League, confirming their relegation to the Championship ourselves with a 4-1 win at the Emirates in May 2013. They have of course gone on to suffer severe financial difficulties and are now languishing in 11th place in League One, having spent time in both the second and third tiers in the last decade or so.

Victory at the DW Stadium lifted us into fifth position and despite a New Year slump in form that brought zero Premier League points in January, we would go on to overturn a huge points deficit to pip Spurs to that season’s final Champions League spot. Results like this one were crucial in keeping us on track in what was a challenging season. The defensive woes that resulted in us conceding 49 Premier League goals in 2011/12 are thankfully a distant memory now.

---

Featured Image Credit: Reading Tom from Reading, UK, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons