When Steve Bruce realised he would be facing a team who had just lost their manager he was not happy. It was bad news for him and bad news for English football that Lawrie Sanchez had been sacked.

“I didn’t like that at all,” the Wigan Athletic manager said. “For whatever reason it gets a reaction [from the players], doesn’t it? I don’t know Lawrie well, but there’s only 92 of us. We know it’s dog eat dog but you feel for people when they lose their jobs because I’ve been there before and it’s not nice. There’s only seven other Englishmen, too [in the Barclays Premier League]. What encouragement does it give a young English manager to try and get the badges, the qualifications, the pro-licence? It takes you the best part of five years. Will there be an Englishman that gets the top jobs? I don’t think so at the moment.”

Bruce was right to worry about how the Fulham team would react. They played to a man with more freedom than under Sanchez and as a consequence put Wigan under pressure and should have taken the lead during a spirited first half in which Paul Konchesky struck the woodwork from 35 yards.

“We didn’t play so direct,” Clint Dempsey, the Fulham striker, said. “It was like a weight lifted off our shoulders. We were able to express ourselves a bit more and the guys enjoyed that. We weren’t able to get the win, but we were the better side.”

Danny Murphy, the Fulham midfield player, agreed. “There was a bit of freedom in our play today,” he said. “I’m a believer in the fact that you take a few risks to make things happen at the other end and we did that.”

To a degree the Fulham players behaved much like schoolchildren do when a strict teacher has left the room, but it was also part of the grand plan of Ray Lewington, the caretaker manager, as he attempted to prove that he should be considered as Sanchez’s permanent replacement.

“We all play in a different way and I tried to put my stamp on it,” Lewington said. “I said, ‘Let’s have one pass in between the ones we usually have. Instead of knocking it forward with one pass, let’s see if we can maybe play it into midfield and knock it on after that.’ It was only a slight adjustment, but they tried to do it well. We played some good football in patches.”

It was not so much lack of style as results that lost Sanchez his job. Sanchez bemoaned a long run of bad luck that appeared set to continue when Marcus Bent gave Wigan the lead, but eight minutes later Dempsey equalised and Fulham had a rare moment of good fortune when they were not punished for poor defending that gave Antoine Sibierski a chance to clinch Wigan’s first win of the season away from home.

Fulham (4-4-2): A Niemi 5 – E Omozusi 5 (sub: C Baird, 60min 5), C Bocanegra 6, A Hughes 5, P Konchesky 6 – S Davies 6, S Davis 6 (sub: D Healy, 60 5), D Murphy 5, H Bouazza 6 (sub: S Kuqi, 72) – C Dempsey 6, D Kamara 6. Substitutes not used: A Warner, Seol Ki Hyeon. Next: Tottenham Hotspur (a).

Wigan Athletic (4-4-2): C Kirkland 6 – E Boyce 5, P Scharner 7, T Bramble 5, K Kilbane 5 – L A Valencia 5, D Landzaat 5, M Brown 5, R Taylor 6 (sub: S Olembe, 76) – J Aghahowa 5 (sub: A Sibierski, 63 5), M Bent 6. Substitutes not used: M Pollitt, A Granqvist, J Skoko. Next: Newcastle United (h).

Referee A Wiley
Attendance 20,820