Crawley 0 Latics 3

Last updated : 10 February 2019 By The Chairman

The Latics continued their good form under caretaker manager Pete Wild as they came away from Crawley Town with all three points and a 3-0 victory. The goals were all scored in the second half and came from Johan Branger-Engone, Zak Dearnley and Gevaro Nepomuceno.

A delighted Wild said, “I've got to be honest, I really enjoyed that one. I thought the game-plan worked excellently, I thought the subs we made changed the game, just everything went the way I wanted it to go today, so I'm really happy. We had a game-plan to sit in as we generally do as a group here, but what we've added to the group is a little bit of pace and Jose's now getting back to where he was. We've got players now who can change games late and stretch teams and I thought you saw that in abundance in the second-half today. Every teams going to get chances, you're not going to stop a team from getting no chances in the game and I though we dealt with their shape early doors We got to grips with their shape at half-time, made a couple of tweaks to make it better and second-half you got what you saw and got three great finishes.”

"We wanted to play him [Branger-Engone] off the right today because we thought we could get him cutting inside, but then he became more clinical when he came back off the left. He's got pace, he wants to run with the ball, he's got a great strike about him. He's a young lad, he's not going to have that consistency week in, week out, but that's important for a club like ours to develop young lads and make them better footballers. I thought Dearnley did wel. He's trained really well, and he's been a credit to us, so I'm really pleased for him. On your league debut to get a goal there's nothing more special.”

“The journey has been fantastic, it has been an excellent learning curve for me and Chris [Millington] and something we're really proud of. It’s something that we'll go back and reflect on next week and hopefully become better for it as coaches, so if times come again or if we get chance at the next level, we're better prepared. It's pretty emotional. I've got to be honest. I thank everybody for every nice message they've given me, all the support they've given me. But, not just to me, to the players, it's all about the players, we're just the sideshow, we're there to try and make sure everything runs right. I'd like to think we've done that over the six weeks that we've been in charge and hopefully now we pass on a group that's ready for the second-half of the season challenge.”