The Latics lost 3-0 at home to Accrington Stanley on Tuesday in the Mickey Mouse Trophy. It was an experimental team but Head Coach Dino Maamria said that he wanted to progress and was left none too happy with the performance.
He commented after the game, “It doesn't look good. No disrespect to Accrington, they came here and beat us, it's not good and I think that it's a wake-up call for everyone. I think that the more I see of the players the more I learn about them. To be fair, I've got to be honest, I thought we started really bright on the front foot and we looked much better than them. But I think everybody in the stadium will be going home talking about the referee because I thought his performance was very poor and this competition mattered to us and I wanted to win the game. To end up playing the game with ten men and I was trying to protect some of my players for Saturday's game and couldn't even do that.”
“I've got to say some of the lads gave everything they've got, like Christopher Missilou, Mohamad Sylla and I thought that the back four worked really hard as well. Tomas Egert got through 90 minutes but I didn't really want him to play 90 minutes. But, then I look at the other side of it I think some of the lads played are just not at the level that I need them to be and that's something to find out so it's going to be very difficult because we've got no depth in the squad whatsoever. We're crying out for a forward and we've got no forwards. Yeah, we've got young Kielen Adams and Scott Wilson who tries, but it's quite difficult because you come in and you try to work on certain things. But the more I'm finding out about the squad players obviously the more reality for me to see how I'm going to go on until January with those players to try and pick up as many wins as we can.”
“Dylan [Fage] has got to learn from that because it's amateur and unprofessional and I will fine him for that. You can't go into challenges like that and not just give the ball away, but to go in two-footed and cost us the game and cost his teammates. I think that it's a learning curve for him but we've got to deal with it in the right way and there is a lot of ill-discipline and I'm going to get on top of it and there is a lack of fitness as well especially from the squad players. I've got to be honest, I've told them that in the dressing room and I'm saying it now in front of everybody that's not the winning level that I require and I'm going to change things.”
“Filipe Morais came on and gave us a spark and Christopher Missilou and Mohamad Sylla kept going forward and we actually looked more threatening in the second-half and we had chances to score two or three as well, but we didn't. I've got a good group in terms of it's a small squad. I haven't got the depth in the squad that's for definite. What I've got to do is work with the good group and build momentum. Looking back since I've been here the three games, probably Carlisle United away in the first-half was disappointing apart from that we've been good overall and to keep that going. We'll have a day off Wednesday and we're back in Thursday and we'll regroup. Hopefully I'll get David Wheater, Mohamed Maouche and some of those players back and we'll be ready for Mansfield which is going to be a tough game.”