The Latics kick started their season with a very useful 1-0 victory at Bury on Saturday. The only goal of the match came courtesy of an early own goal from Leon Barnett. Lee Erwin received special praise from manager Stephen Robinson who said,
“Lee Erwin has been terrific and I have had my phone ringing already. We will do well just to keep Lee here for the year. He is an absolute handful at this level and people can't handle him at times. He created the chance out of nothing when he hit the post and it will come for him, I have no worries about that. If Billy Mckay and Lee keep working as hard as they do and if we keep winning games with them not scoring then I'll be delighted. It's a part of our game now that we are physical and aggressive.”
“We are not the tallest team in the world, but when you have characters like Paul Green, Peter Clarke and Marc Klok coming in they will run into the ground for you and that's what you want. If you don't match Bury, they will roll you over. For the first 10 minutes they did that and we probably scored against the run of play. From then on, we were in control not only of the physical battle but of the football as well. I said to the players that there were 1,500 fans here today and what they want to see is energy, desire, drive and passion. They gave it to them in abundance so we sent away a lot of people happy.”