Wigan Athletic have appointed former winger Shaun Maloney as manager on a three-and-a-half-year deal.

The 40-year-old replaces Kolo Toure, who was sacked after just nine games in charge on Thursday.

The Latics are bottom of the Championship table, four points adrift of safety.

"I have amazing memories here and created some fabulous moments with teams and with fans, and I'm excited to get started," Maloney said.

"The feeling that I have from those times as a player is a big factor for me. I have been here previously and have always felt a great warmth from the supporters.

"I want the fans to see a team that is giving absolutely everything, fighting to get better and the supporters need to feel that. The connection is there, we just need to reawaken it."

The former Scotland international made 91 appearances across four seasons with the Latics and was part of the team that won the FA Cup in 2013.

He moved into coaching with Celtic, where he had started his playing career, before joining the staff of ex-Wigan boss Roberto Martinez with Belgium.

Hibernian gave him his first job in management in December 2021 but he was sacked last April after winning just six of his 19 games in charge.

He now becomes Wigan's third manager of the season after Leam Richardson was sacked in November and replaced by rookie boss Toure, who failed to win any of his nine games.

Graham Barrow has left Exeter City to return to the club as assistant manager. The 68-year-old previously spent eight years at DW Stadium between 2009 and 2017.

Maloney's first game in charge will be a trip to promotion hopefuls Blackburn a week on Monday, 6 February.

2 points for each correct scorer
Correct joker doubles your score      
Wrong joker result gives you minus 2
Correct Random Badger gives you 2 points

The random badger is used for any random prediction used once in each matchday sequence. For instance, a scorer at a particular match, the number of red cards in the matches or yellow cards or own goals or owt you want really within reason, I do need to be able to check whether it's correct or not. Please don't put stuff like....."Commentator says...."  
The joker   is played for one match in each sequence and if correct you get double points. So if you've predicted 1-0 and it finishes 2-0, you get 4 pts, but if you've predicted 2-0, that's 8 pts. But if you get it wrong, it's minus 2.
Jokers and badgers are optional. You don't have to play one if you don't want.

The prize for winning the league is one rep point.

Cup games: In the event of a draw, it's half the points if you've predicted a draw when it gets to 90 mins and the full points if it's still a draw after extra time. Half the points will be awarded for correctly predicting the winner of the match if it goes to penalties. Similarly with the badger, if your random prediction is affected by this, it'll be half the points.

Random score generator: I will be using the random score generator again for those who miss predicting, so we shouldn't get some people too far behind that after missing a couple of weeks they lose all interest, because I know it's not easy getting on here every week.
To be fair to everybody, this is going to be like, say if three people in one week miss their predictions, the first one in the table will be given all 0-0, the second one down the line will get 1-0 and the third will get 0-1 and so on, like if there's four missing the 4th will get 1-1, then 5th 2-1, 6th 1-2. and if there are so many missing, might as well pack in.
And if you miss two weeks on the trot, I'll stop until you come back on again. Not doing it for half a season like I did t'other year.  

End of season Play Offs: The one who finishes top of the league will still be champion, but after the season finishes there will be Play Offs between the top 4, with 1st v 4th and 2nd v 3rd. This will take in stuff like the EFL Play Offs, FA Cup Final, final day of Prima Donna League, European Finals etc. It will be one matchday for the semis and one for the Final. It will be the individual scores for each matchday against the allotted opponent, with some kind of tie breaker for a drawn match.

The prize for winning will be enormous. Another rep point.

Friday February 3rd:
West Bromwich Albion v Coventry City

Saturday February 4th:
Town v QPR
Town scorers:
QPR scorers:

Norwich City v Burnley (12:30)
Rotherham United v Sheffield United (12:30)
Hull City v Cardiff City
Luton Town v Stoke City
Middlesbrough v Blackpool
Millwall v Sunderland
Preston North End v Bristol City
Reading v Watford
Swansea City v Birmingham City

Monday February 6th:
Blackburn Rovers v Wigan Athletic

Tuesday 7th February:
Blackpool v Town
Town scorers:
Blackpool scorers:

FA Cup 4th round replays:
Tuesday:
Burnley v Ipswich Town
Fleetwood Town v Sheffield Wednesday
Grimsby Town v Luton Town
Sheffield United v Wrexham

Wednesday:
Sunderland v Fulham

Table after Matchday 24:

1. jjamez = 570 pts
   
2. theo_luddite = 525 pts
   
3. neonfoxinthebox = 508 pts
   
4. themaclad = 506 pts
   
5. Baggiebob(BBB) = 497 pts
   
6. Lord Snooty = 479 pts
   
7. ritchiebaby = 469 pts
   
8. St Charles Owl = 464 pts
   
9. SHEP_HTAFC = 462 pts
   
10. Amelia Chaffinch = 442 pts
    
11. Devongone = 408 pts
    
12. WakeyTerrier = 171 pts

Aldershot 1-3 Boreham Wood
Eastleigh 1-1 Barnet
Solihull Moors 1-2 Notts County
Woking 2-1 Torquay
Yeovil 3-2 Wealdstone


League Table After Matchday 36
Devon - 715
St Charles Owl - 607
Lord Snoots - 596
SaltergateBorn - 580
Spireitematt - 578
Amelia - 571
Dancing - 531

Jimmy Dean has taken over as Scunthorpe United manager after leaving National League North club Peterborough Sports, who won four promotions under him.

He will be assisted by former QPR defender Chris Plummer - who also worked with him at Peterborough Sports, where Dean became boss in 2015.

Former Hartlepool defender Michael Nelson will stay at Glanford Park and has been given the title of head coach.

Nelson had been in interim charge since Tony Daws' departure in November.

Dean inherits a side second bottom of the National League table, having won just five of their 29 league games this season.

Scunthorpe, who were in the Championship as recently as 2011, were relegated to the fifth tier last season after 72 years in the Football League.

The club were served with a winding up petition by HM Revenue and Customs earlier this month, and put under a transfer embargo.

However, a recent takeover of the Iron by David Hilton has raised hopes of a recovery.

So it is fair unanimous that we are wanting Buzz to go off into infinity and possibly beyond. I will point out here and now, I have nothing against him as a person, I can't say I have taken to him at all, I just don't think he is suited to this job and believes his own hype way too much. He may go on to have a perfectly good coaching or managing career elsewhere, if so fair play to him. He's had a very poor hand dealt to begin with and struggled like anyone would, but as it's been getting better with regards to players coming back, the performances on the pitch haven't, his ramblings make it appear we have been close, but most the time, if we had been a horse, we'd have pulled up long ago, we're coming third in a two horse race half the time.

So where would we look? or more accurately what options are there. In my mind anyways, you can have your say. We may not look at any of the names that gets mentioned but its part of the fun I guess.

So we were rumoured to be interested in Carrick but Mr Bromby felt that Fotheringham was the better (cheaper) option, would I be against going for an coach who has never been the main man before? no, provided that their coaching history has more meat to the bones. Fotheringham had a six month spell at Hertha and then a couple of spells in the second and third division as an assistant, it wasn't really extensive, so how he padded it out on a CV to entice Bromby I don't know.

Lets look at the more inexperienced candidates that I personally would be willing to look towards.


Eric Ramsay- Man United. Younger than a fair few members of our squad, of yesterdays line up, I make Lowton, Lees, Hogg and Rhodes all older than him, but he does have decent pedigree behind him. Having started at Swansea as the U18s manager he also had a spell at Shrewsbury as assistant manager before moving to Chelsea as an under 23s coach for a couple of seasons where he would have coached players like Hudson-Odoi, Tino Anjorin, Jon Russell and Loftus-Cheek to name a few, with Lampard and Tuchel as manager whilst he was there. He left and moved on to Manchester United where he has been a first team coach under Ten Hag, Ole and Rangnick. He's been credited as being good with coaching set pieces and developing players. He was one of the names linked initially with the Blackpool job. Some more about him can be found here https://www.coachesvoice.com/cv/eric-ram...d-chelsea/

Anthony Barry- Chelsea/ Belgium. Another with links to Chelsea, Barry's playing career saw him bounce around the lower leagues before retiring and becoming Paul Cooks assistant manager at Wigan for 3 years. He left to join Chelsea as a first team assistant manager, working under Tuchel, Lampard and now Potter as well as having a spell as Republic of Ireland assistant manager and Belgium's assistant manager under Roberto Martinez. He was one of the names linked when Schofield left but it was reported that he would be unavailable to take over until after the world cup. It has not been said whether he is following Martinez to Portugal, but it would seem that making his first steps into first team management is soon to be on the cards. He is credited as being the brains behind Chelsea's champions league victory. The Daily Mail reported that he turned us down in favour of Belgium and that we were going to appoint Wagner...They was wrong...but Barry would be an interesting option now

Liam Manning- Former MK Dons manager, he had them playing nice football and on the periphery of getting back into the Championship but fell at the play off hurdle. His side was built around good loanees and good up coming players, but they moved on during the summer and were not replaced. Manning failed to replicate the form of the season before and was sacked with the side in a relegation battle. Sounds familiar doesn't it? He won 41 of his 83 games in charge of MK Dons so he shouldn't be tarred by this one bad season, before Milton Keynes he had a decent spell in charge of Lommel in Belgium as well as being academy manager at New York City and West Ham prior to that. Still young, he could quite possibly build something if given the chance to develop our good young players like Diarra.



Moving on to the more experienced candidates at this level

Dean Smith- Was getting called dino Dean by some Norwich fans, but with where we are, a bit of prehistoric bite might not go amiss. Began managing at Walsall where his sides played decent football but was maybe hampered by the size of the club compared to others around it. He moved on to Brentford where, again, his sides played decent football and were starting to make play off noises in the Championship before moving onto Aston Villa where he managed to get them promoted to the Premier League via the play offs and keep them there, but the owners went down a different road after an indifferent start to last season and he was replaced by Gerrard. SMith would move to Norwich where he failed to keep them in the league and instead would try and build a side to bounce back. They started the season well but drifted off and he was ultimately hounded out by the fans not long after christmas and replaced by mr Wagner.

Chris Wilder- worked wonders with Sheffield United getting them promoted from league one up to the premier League via the championship. Keeping United in the prem was an achievement equally as impressive as Wagner keeping us up there. Before United he managed Northampton to promotion from league two despite financial issues and before then he brought Oxford back into the football league. His time at Middlesbrough didn't yield the results he'd have wanted and he was replaced by carrick. He still managed a 40% win ratio, it was more a results to money spent problem that cost him his job this season.

Mark Warburton- currently a first team coach at West ham, but I'd imagine he'd have some sort of break clause to allow him to become the main man again. His managerial career to me says always the bridesmaid rather than the bride as he flirts with the play offs but never quite makes it. His time at QPR saw them being a steady away outfit but the fans began to want more. Before that at forest he fell foul of an owner who chopped and changed more than a catwalk model does outfits. Again they were more midtable but the fawaz al-hasawi had dreams of premier league and Europe. Before forest he had done a decent job at rangers, winning the league and cup, and left unceremoniously, he also got Brentford promoted to the championship and essentially started the ball rolling there.

Valarien Ishmael- we saw what he did with Barnsley and it's the sort of thing that would have to happen here if we can't afford much to spend. His time at West brom showed his style doesn't always translate, his most recent job was at besiktas and whilst he's been sacked, it would be unfair to label him a poor manager, his record there wasn't bad, there's just a lot of chopping and changing in Turkish football.

Neil Warnock- is he an option?



As for lower league options

Paul Cook- began with a short spell at Southport before moving on to have a five year stay at Sligo. He guided Sligo to European football on a couple of occasions before moving to Accrington Stanley for a short stint. He'd move on quickly to chesterfield and eventually would guide them to the league two title, the next season he'd just miss out on back to back promotions. Town fans would recognize him more from his time at Wigan where he'd get them promoted to the championship, he left when they went into admin. He's currently at chesterfield again after a failed spell at Ipswich.

Karl Robinson- once a highly rated coach when at mk Dons, known for playing good possession football, his side would lose to us in the playoffs but eventually they would get promoted to the championship. He's lost his way a little at Charlton and now Oxford where they sit midtable in league one but could still be an option

Gareth Ainsworth- leather jacket and long hair, what's not to like? Did well with Wycombe in the championship and could have stayed up had the fa punished derby correctly. Seems to play effective football, would it work here and more importantly would he leave Wycombe?

Leam Richardson- got wigan promoted to the championship last season but struggled this season and was replaced by kolo toure who has already been replaced. I can't say much about him other than he knows how to get out of league one


As for some left field options, not as far left as Fotheringham mind

Stuart Pearce- I don't think he's a bad coach, he was most recently at West ham. He was doing well at forest before injuries struck their squad and they tailed off. Probably not a long term option, but a known leader during his playing days with previous of coaching England's under 21s there probably a lot worse out there. He could probably make the left back spot his too.

Nigel Clough- very left field for me, but has always done well with little money or quality at his disposal. Upset the odds to get Burton to the championship and beat us at the John Smith's. He shouldn't even be a candidate, but after what's gone on this season he's definitely no worse.

Alan Pardew- 7 year contracts are few and far between and the Alan pardew that got that deal is long gone, but once upon a time he was a good manager that got things out of players and was able to find good players in places that wasn't always scouted. Has disappeared onto the continent of late, but a short term save us deal would probably suit both parties.

John Herdman- who? An English manager what guided Canada to the world cup, both men and women's sides. Obviously a vastly unknown quantity at club level much like fotheringham was, but world cup and international experience shouldn't count for nothing. Could also appeal to any prospective North American buyers who may have more of an idea on what he has done.

Foreign options, well I do like the idea, but at the moment I don't really see us being viable to a foreign manager and vice versa. Unless they have managed over here before and are looking at getting back into the English Leagues like Lamouchi has done at Cardiff. If that is the case then the names would be the likes of Oscar Garcia and Javi Gracia for examples but I'm not sure they would be options.

Hibs boosted by a massive confidence building 6-0 win v a poor Dons' team while the Staggies have just won 3-0 v Killie in a bottom league clash that forced Killie to the bottom of the Scot Prem. This match is intriguing in the fact that Hibs have a revised defence that looks a tad better than the one that had Porto and Rocky in situ. We'll see what Hibs team shows up in this game. Has Lee Johnson come across a formation that makes the team look far more durable in defence and more positive up front? My biggest concern relates to Johnson's tactical ineptness when it comes to changing things when a game becomes difficult. There must be a chance of some injured players returning (plus new players in before the transfer window closes) although it has been refreshing to see some of our vg youth players finally being given an opportunity to impress. Aiden McGeady, Youan, Josh Campbell, Joe Newell and Kevin Nisbet really look like a core of players who are "up for the challenge" - enjoying their fitba with positive and hi-press stuff! Fish and Jeggo look like they've added some defensive security with their battling qualities. Early days to judge though! IMO it looks like another pivotal moment where Hibs have a chance to register an element of consistency by winning another match. C'mon Hibs! Lets pick up this positive momentum and keep going!

GGTTH

Cardiff City have appointed former Nottingham Forest boss Sabri Lamouchi as their third manager of the season.

Lamouchi, 51, will be joined by ex-Bluebirds defender Sol Bamba, who will assist his former Ivory Coast national team manager.

Lamouchi's contract at the Cardiff City Stadium is understood to run until the end of the season.

Cardiff sacked Steve Morison in September while his successor Mark Hudson lasted just 118 days.

Dean Whitehead, who has been caretaker manager, will remain at the club as part of Lamouchi's backroom staff.

Lamouchi's remit will be to keep Cardiff in the Championship, with the Welsh club hovering just one place above the relegation zone in 21st position and without a win in 11 games in all competitions.

"His appointment has come about following a period of serious consideration and reflection as to what is the best for our club," Cardiff owner Vincent Tan told the club's website.

"I'm confident Sabri will be able to deliver what we know this squad is capable of achieving and I look forward to the games that we have ahead of us.

"I'd also like to welcome back Sol, a sentiment I know that [fans] will share."

It is understood the Cardiff board felt experience of managing in the Championship was essential as they sought Hudson's replacement.

Lamouchi was in charge of Forest when they were pipped to the play-offs by Cardiff and Swansea City on goal difference on the final day of the 2019-20 season, his first campaign at the helm.

What to expect ahead of transfer deadline for Swansea, Cardiff, Newport and Wrexham
Cardiff City fans protest against club owner Vincent Tan before Millwall game
He was replaced by Chris Hughton in October 2020 following a poor start to the following season.

Since then the Frenchman has managed Qatari side Al-Duhail, having previously worked in Ligue 1 as manager of Rennes, steering them to fifth before taking the role at the City Ground.

The former midfielder had a distinguished playing career during which he won silverware with Auxerre, Monaco, Parma, Marseille and El Jaish in Qatar.

Bamba returns
Sol Bamba
Sol Bamba scored 10 goals in 118 appearances for Cardiff
Bamba's return will be popular with fans, as he was a key player during his five years with the club.

The former defender made 118 appearances for the Bluebirds between 2016 and 2021, scoring the winner on his debut against Bristol City in what was also Neil Warnock's first game in charge.

The Ivory Coast international's immediate impact - and rapport with Warnock - helped move the club from relegation worries to a mid-table finish, before promotion to the Premier League in 2018.

Bamba played in every game of that successful promotion campaign and was named in the Championship team of the season.

Writing on social media about his return to Cardiff, Bamba said: "Back in the Blue Nest. Delighted to be back in a club that means so much to me. [It is a] difficult situation but all together we will turn this round."

During his time as a Cardiff player, Bamba was also diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but announced he was cancer free four months later after undergoing chemotherapy.

Bamba, who played for Middlesbrough last season, will be joined in Cardiff's backroom team by Whitehead, first-team coach Tom Ramasut and Graham Stack, who remain at the club.

"I want to thank Dean, Tom and Graham for their commitment and diligence during the interim period and am pleased that they will be part of our plans going forward," Tan added.

Cardiff will look to bolster their squad before the transfer window closes, but are only able to sign loan players and free transfers following the lifting of their transfer embargo.

The lifting of the embargo follows Cardiff paying the first instalment of the £15m transfer fee for striker Emiliano Sala, who died in a plane crash en route to joining the club in January 2019.

Fifa imposed a transfer embargo for three transfer windows following Cardiff's refusal to pay the first instalment of the fee they had agreed for Argentine striker Sala.

Cardiff had insisted Sala was not officially registered as their player.

They lost their appeal against that ruling by Fifa at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne in 2022, though the dispute continues.

Aldershot 0-1 Oldham
Altrincham 1-0 Boreham Wood
Barnet 2-3 Chesterfield
Dag & Red 2-1 Yeovil
Dorking 1-0 Solihull Moors
Notts County 2-1 Halifax
Scunthorpe 1-3 Bromley
Southend 0-2 Eastleigh
Torquay 2-1 Maidstone United
Wealdstone 1-0 Gateshead
York 0-2 Maidenhead United



League Table After Matchday 35
Devon - 696
Lord Snoots - 592
St Charles Owl - 576
SaltergateBorn - 570
Spireitematt - 570
Amelia - 563
Dancing - 504

in the House of Lords?