Three wise men fire up Monk’s play-off bid
WIGAN ATHLETIC boss Paul Cook reckoned defeat to Birmingham City was a perfect reflection of the way things are going for his side at the moment.
Having started brightly, the Latics failed to make the most of their chances in the opening exchanges.
And they fell behind midway through the first half to Che Adams’ well-worked goal.
Skipper Michael Morrison doubled the Blues’ lead on the stroke of half-time.
Jacques Maghoma completed the scoring on the hour mark.
Wigan have now won only one of their last 10 matches and Cook was struggling to find many positives.
“It’s where we’re at, in a tough league, that’s underlined by what happened today,” said the Wigan boss.
“We were up against a tough team, well-organised, physically strong, hard to break down and full of good players.
“We’re starting to become a little bit suspect in both boxes and it has to change.
“I’m not a manager who will come out here and criticise my players.
“I have never done that and I never will, we’ll keep that in-house.”
For Blues boss Garry Monk, it was close to the perfect away day performance from start to finish.
“I thought we were professional, clinical, kept a clean sheet and showed good game management,” he said.
“Those are four aspects of any game that you need to be strong in and we were at it today.
“Certainly compared to a few games lately, that was much more like the standard we’ve been producing on the whole this season.”
The comfortable win leaves Birmingham four points off the top six and Monk insists his front men can fire them into the play-off mix.
He added: “I’ve said it all along, but when you’ve got strikers who are in such confident mood, you’re capable of anything.
“Of we can get the ball into them they can cause most teams problems.
“It was a fabulous away performance and we thoroughly deserved the win.”