Since 2009 Wigan have been teetering on the brink. After Steve Bruce left the club - preceded by Wilson Palacios and Emile Heskey, followed by Antonio Valencia and Lee Cattermole – having just guided them to their 2nd highest ever league finish, things haven’t been the same. In each of the two seasons since they have finished in 16th, and so far this campaign they look set to live up to the many predictions made that they would finally, after seven Premier League years, drop back down to the Championship.

After claiming a win and two draws in their opening three matches – each against one of the newly promoted sides – Wigan have lost four on the bounce and sit in the bottom three. Roberto Martínez needs something to change for his side, and looking at the fixtures which take them into the New Year, he needs it to change now.

Had Wigan fans looked at the opening seven fixtures of this season, they would have been well within their rights to have expected a return far in advance of the five points they have collected. Aside from the short trip to face Manchester City and the visit of Tottenham, each of the games has been one from which they could have expected to take something. Defeats against Aston Villa and Everton and draws against Norwich and Swansea, however, were not what the fans had ordered.

What’s more, were it not for Franco di Santo’s seemingly innate ability to score goals via deflections, it could have been a whole lot worse for Wigan. Their determination to play passing football is admirable, and in players such as Ben Watson and James McCarthy they have talent to do so, but for some time now their defence has been simply disastrous. Gary Caldwell and Emmerson Boyce are not names to strike fear into the hearts of Championship level strikers, let alone their Premier League counterparts, though at least they do have an impressive goalkeeper behind them in Ali Al-Habsi.

The next six games, however, present Wigan with another chance of building up momentum and getting points on the board. In the past five years, only once has a team with fewer than 17 points at the halfway stage gone on to escape relegation (Sunderland, with only 14 points in their first 19 games, stat fans). If Wigan are to reach such a mark before the reverse fixtures begin, the majority of those points are going to have to come in the next six games.

Starting with the visit of bottom-of-the-table Bolton on Saturday, they then have home games against Fulham and Blackburn interspersed between trips to Newcastle, Wolverhampton and Sunderland. It isn’t unreasonable to think that nine or perhaps ten points could be garnered from that run, but then the same was said of their opening seven fixtures.

Should Wigan fail to bag themselves a fair number of points in that run of fixtures, then there is every possibility that they will be up a certain creek with no paddle in sight. The six fixtures that follow, taking them up to the halfway mark of the season, read like Hell on earth. Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Stoke; only a trip to face West Brom at the Hawthorns in that time will offer any sort of relief.

Four points from that run would surely have to be counted as success, and if they have failed to make any head way in their previous run of fixtures, trouble will be staring them directly in the face. For a club of the size and relatively small fan base of Wigan, who have not, in the last few years, been able to spend even on Premier League money, relegation to the Championship is a potential black hole.

One only has to look in the direction of Nottingham Forest, Sheffield United, Charlton, Southampton and the like for examples of relegation from the top flight money pit being catastrophic to the fortunes of a club. Wigan struggle to fill their stadium for even the biggest of games – the visit of Tottenham attracted only 18,788 fans to their 25,138 capacity home – and a drop down to the Championship would inevitably hurt their attendances even further. Should Wigan fulfill those many predictions that have them headed for the drop, it may well be the start of a long, painful fall and their seven years in the Premier League will be but a memory.

They may have teetered for two years, but it is the next six games that will be crucial in determining whether they finally tumble over the edge.