Jewell plays it cool

Liddell scored another goal

They stretched their unbeaten tun in the league to 12 games with a hard earned 1-0 win at Brentford, but the manager refuses to get carried away.
A late strike by Andy Liddell gave them the win at Griffin Park, his goal being the 1,500th have scored since gaining Football League status in 1978. It also brought ton an end Brentford’s unbeaten home tun which went back to April of last year. While delighted with the victory, Jewell cooled play off talk afterwards, insisting he was looking no further than tomorrow’s visit of league leaders Reading to the JJB Stadium.
He said, “Slowly is the right word to describe our progress because we donor seem to be able to get out of the bottom half of the table at the moment. I know it’s a boring old clique, but we’re taking each game as it comes. We’re looking forward to the Reading game, and we do tend to play better football against the top teams.”
“The last three games we have played Bristol City, Brighton and Brentford and we’re unbeaten in that little sequence. If we could produce that form for the rest of the season, you never know what might happen, but we have given ourselves a mountain to climb.”
Latics remain in 13th place after the weekend, although they closed the gap on Colchester immediately above them to two points. But four of the five teams between Colchester and the play off zone all won. Jewell admitted Saturday’s game hadn’t been a classic, but praised the determination and effort put in by the players.
He said, “I was particularly happy with the way we played in the first half, and while we battled, we didn’t pass the ball well. We got into the habit of humping the ball forward rather than taking a bit more care. When we did start to play with some care, we had a couple of decent moves and opened them up. Overall it wasn’t pretty to watch, but getting the three points is what counts.”
“It was nice to win 3-0 last week, but it gives you just as much pleasure sometimes to win games like this. We would definitely have lost that game earlier in the season because we were brittle then. I’m not saying we are the finished article by a long way, but slowly and surely we have got better.”
Jewell had a pat on the back for Liddell, who joins Simon Haworth at the top of the club’s scoring charts with ten goals this season. “It was nice to reach 1,500

Jewell was pleased with how Croft played

goals, and it’s always good to see your strikers scoring.” said the boss. “Lids is on a bit of a run at the moment, and hopefully can go on and get a few more. The goal actually caught me by surprise because it came out of nothing. I was thinking of making a substitution and the next thing I knew, Lids was scoring the goal. It was a cool finish.”
Loan signing Gary Croft was given his Latics debut at left back, and Jewell was fairly pleased with his contribution. He said, “Gary came in and did okay, but he has been playing reserve team football, and probably got caught out with the pace of the game.”

Story by Dave Seddon for the Wigan Evening Post