
THE GAME
Hopes of a third successive league win for Rovers were dashed at The Brick Community Stadium as the home side ran out comfortable 2-0 winners.
Inigo Calderon made two changes to his starting XI for this match, bringing in Joel Senior and Ruel Sotiriou for Taylor Moore and Scott Sinclair, who both found themselves on the bench.

themselves on the bench.
Wigan, without a home league win since November, took a sixth minute lead when defender powered a header past Josh Griffiths from Joe Hungbo’s free kick from the right.
The hosts went close to doubling their lead through Dale Taylor, but his curled shot from the edge of the area drifted wide of the target.
As for Rovers, their only noteworthy efforts of a low key first half were from Sotiriou, who shot well wide of goal and Gatlin O’Donkor whose left foot effort was comfortably saved by Sam Tickle. There was another opportunity for the on loan Oxford man, but he hit a tame shot wide under pressure from two home defenders.

An early second half effort by Thelo Aasgaard saw his deflected shot drift just wide of goal and then O’Donkor almost drew Rovers’ level just before the hour mark. Collecting the ball from Lino Sousa’s corner, he saw his close range effort produce a stunning save from Tickle who was also equal to the striker’s second effort from the rebound.
With 20 minutes of the contest remaining the home side put the game to bed when some pretty awful defending by Rovers allowed Taylor to thread the ball through to substituite Jonny Smith who calmly slotted the ball past Griffiths.
It could have been worse as, shortly afterwards, Aasgaard saw his ferocious drive come back into play off the crossbar. Rovers seldom threatened the Wigan goal all afternoon and the hope that came after the previous week’s win against Barnsley quickly evaporated with a tepid display at The Brick Community Stadium.
THEY SAID WHAT?
‘I am disappointed, especially with the way we started. That was not good enough. I said to the boys that if anyone is thinking that we are in a good situation or we are safe or something like that, they are wrong. We have been in a bad situation for a long time. I don’t think we started the game well enough. Not even the goal, before for five or six minutes the intensity was not there. Mentally, I don’t think we started the game the way we should.
‘When you have to change the game, it’s going to be more difficult for you and it is as simple as that. You have to do a lot of good things. Especially again, I don’t want to be pessimistic, but when you are there, you have to do a lot of things right because most of the time, the luck is not with you. Today, we had chances, not too many, but we created a couple. I think it was a corner as well that on another day, maybe we could have scored.
‘The team are definitely improving. I think we were better with the ball. Even defensively, we conceded chances and we conceded far too many chances. I think we did better today. We were more prepared to press, and they had to kick longer because we were better. We tried to control more of the game, but still, you can see that there is a big room to improve because of the pace. If we want to play, we have to stay calm with the ball.’ (Rovers Head Coach Inigo Calderon)

‘Obviously, it’s frustrating. We didn’t start the game good enough. We conceded early on, and then we’re always on the back foot. I didn’t feel like there was much in the game, but me personally and the team, we didn’t progress up the pitch quickly enough, find that right pass or finish the chances that we did have, which obviously left us disappointed on the day.
‘We can’t dwell on this game. We’ll review it on Monday. We’ve got to be confident going into the game on Tuesday. There’s always a game in a few days in football. We know it’s going to be a tough game, but we’ve got to come prepared, be confident and hopefully go and win the game.”
‘We are 100 per cent progressing. You can see out on the pitch that we have more of the ball, we’re conceding fewer chances, and we understand the game better, but it’s down to us. The Head Coach gives us the tactics to go and win the game, but it’s down to us. We’re on the pitch, and we know what we’re doing going into each game. It just feels like today, we didn’t quite execute the plan well enough, but I feel like we’ll progress. We’re definitely a team that’s good enough to push up the table, and I feel like we will.’ (Rovers defender Joel Senior)
‘It’s nice to have that type of result, and I was really happy with large parts of the performance. It was a very different performance to our game here against Burton on Tuesday and it was a lot more controlled.
‘I quite like what Bristol Rovers try to do, but we definitely didn’t press anywhere near as high as we did against Burton and I actually thought it was probably one of our most controlled performances we’ve had since I’ve been here.
‘We needed our goalkeeper at one point in the second half but, if we’d been a bit more clinical, it could have been even more comfortable. We’ve built this squad, and I ask a lot of the players. Trying to get the right balance is the hard part.’ (Wigan manager Shaun Maloney)