Report by John Patrick Heeley

Wigan suffered their first league defeat of the season against Walsall at the Bescot Stadium, going down 2-0 thanks to early goals from Jorge Leitao and Dean Keates.

Latics were without regular goalkeeper Roy Carroll, who was on international duty, but he was ably replaced by Derek Stillie.

The table toppers with a maximum four wins out of four against the team fancied by the bookmakers to be top of the table come next May - the game was billed as a crunch match and even at this early part of the season a six-pointer.

Latics were without first choice keeper Roy Carroll who was over in Belfast plying his trade at international level, where he kept a clean sheet for Northern Ireland albeit against lowly Malta. Derek Stillie came in as a more than able replacement in goal and could not have been blamed for either of the Walsall goals.

Latics started the game well and for the opening ten minutes bombarded the Saddlers' defence but couldn't find a way through.

Then on 10 minutes Walsall, in their first real attack on the Wigan goal, went 1-0 up. A piece of sloppy defending allowed Portugeuse striker JORGE LEITAO to move clear on goal and his low shot curled around Stillie and sneaked in at the far post for Walsall Number 14's third league goal of the campaign.

Walsall were then spurred into action and hit a purple patch and it wasn't much of a surprise when they doubled the deficit five minutes later. More poor defending and a hint of pushing and shoving allowed Walsall's new signing Brett Angell to slot a ball past Stillie over to the far post where DEAN KEATES slid in to push the ball over the line.

Walsall continued to dominate the game until the half hour mark when Wigan decided to get a grip on the game again. They continuously pushed forward but again to no avail thanks largely to a more than solid performance from defender and Walsall's man of the match Tony Barrass who frustrated the Wigan attack with a string of clearances.

In the final minutes of the half Latics could and should have pulled themselves back into the contest, but after peppering the Walsall goal with a barrage of efforts went into the dressing room with nothing to show.

HALF TIME: Walsall 2 Wigan 0

The second half started much as the first had ended with Latics throwing everything at Walsall but again there was no way through a defence that the media had previously labelled as suspect.

On 65 minutes Latics went agonisingly close to pulling a goal back when a low drive from Andy Liddell beat James Walker in the Walsall goal and from where I was sat the ball was going in all the way but the ball clipped the inside of the post and span across the goalmouth and that was that.

A couple of minutes later Walker pushed the ball off the line after a defender had unwittingly knocked it towards his own goal but for some reason the assistant referee had his flag up anyway.

Walsall had a couple of chances to put the game well out of reach in a brief spell on the attack but a fine save by Stillie and a block by Gareth Griffiths denied them.

Scott Green was booked for a foul on 70 minutes before being replaced by Welshman Neil Roberts, who despite giving it his best couldn't make an impact on the game.

Wigan's remarkable start to last season won't be mirrored but it's early days and one defeat won't cost them promotion but I'll expect to see Walsall somewhere around when it comes to the run in.

FINAL SCORE: Walsall 2 Wigan 0