Mackay ahead of Reading trip

Last updated : 17 February 2015 By Paul Farrington

With the Latics just a point of the foot of the table and nine points adrift of safety manager Malky Makacy gives his pre-Reading thoughts.

Speaking to the club's official website he said: “The players want to pick themselves up after the disappointment from Nottingham Forest last week.

“That was one of very few games whereby the performance wasn’t at the standard it should be at.  Over the time I’ve been here a lot of our games have been close, but with the Forest game the players know they needed to work harder, they’re desperate to improve from that performance.

“The boys have been working extremely hard, but it was an off night for a lot of people and that’s something the players will own up to.

“There’ll be no knee jerk reaction because the players re-watched the game, picked up on their mistakes during the de-brief and have been working on putting things right in the build up to this fixture.

“We’ll continue to prepare in the same way by looking at how we can control the other team’s strengths and take advantage of their weaknesses.

“We need to be mentally prepared as well, and it’s about instilling confidence into the players that they can go out there and beat teams, whether that’s home or away.”

The game would be a perfect opportunity for the Latics to kick start the season and with games against Charlton and Blackpool around the corner now would be a great time to learn how to win.