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Match Preview: Doncaster Rovers vs Wigan Athletic

Latics make the trip the Keepmoat Stadium in a bid to make it 17 points out of 21, Strugglers Doncaster however bid to claim their first win in 9 in all competitions.

Alex Livesey

In Latics' fist home game of the season, these two sides played out a very thrilling 2-2 draw where Wigan came back from 2-0 for Leon Barnett to stroke home the equaliser in the dying seconds, the defender wheeled away in jubilation showing his passion for club in the unprecedented "shirt rip". The two teams now find themselves in two very different posistions but ultimately fighting for the goals they set out at the start of the season.

Latics come into the game in 10th 3 points of the play-offs with that game in hand away to Sheffield Wednesday still to play. Meanwhile Doncaster find themselves occupying the last of the relegation spots in 22nd, Paul Dickov's side will be hoping to claim their first win in 9 and potentially leapfrog Ian Holloway's Millwall into 21st. At the other end of the form table, Latics are currently in their best spell this season with 5 wins out of 8 and currently unbeaten in the league under Uwe Rosler. They will hope to keep that run going ahead of the 4th round tie against Premier League's bottom club Crystal Palace.

No doubt Rosler will have watched the reverse fixture back in August and realised that the Yorkshire side play some attractive football and would be wrong to underestimate the new boys. Paul Dickov however will take nots of his sides first half performance back in August and look to inspire from that performance.

Team News:

Wigan- Shaun Maloney and Gary Caldwell are still out although the latter is nearing return, Nicky Maynard is to be named in the squad as is Ty Browning who is waiting for his full debut whilst Rob Kiernan will be once again available after being cup-tied against MK Dons in mid-week.

Doncaster- Paul Quin, Jamie McCombe and Rob Jones are still all out but there are no new injuries to Paul Dickov's side.

Wigan are certainly favorites for the tie as they were in the reverse fixture but with the Doncaster side proving unpredictably dangerous all season, Rosler will be fully aware of the situation in hand. He will have to find a good balance between keeping a strong squad out and resting the players who put the team into the fourth round of the FA Cup. After revealing this week he does not want to 'burnout' Nick Powell and the 120 minutes we played in midweek and the weekly changes to the starting eleven we see each week, does that suggest Rosler will make a complete change to the starting line? We will see come half past 2 tomorrow afternoon.

I along with 1500 Latics' Fans will be making the trip to South Yorkshire tomorrow, in his pre-match interview with the Club Website, Uwe Rosler took time to comment on the travelling Latics Fans as well as our opposition for tomorrow:

"Doncaster are a team we have to be wary of, we're one of the big scalps in the division at the moment and they will want to prove a point against us."

"It's great to see that so many supporters will be following us to Doncaster tomorrow, I'm very happy to see that they are buying into the hard work that my players are putting in."

A win tomorrow could see us occupy the last play-off spot on 39 points whilst Doncaster could see themselves further slip into the relegation.