Wigan need more points, says Martinez

Wigan manager Roberto Martinez said his side cannot afford to lose again in the Premier League this season if they are to avoid relegation.

Martinez’s men went down to an 89th-minute goal to Philippe Senderos on Saturday, having held the lead thanks to an Emerson Boyce strike for just sixty seconds.

Following the game, the former Swansea boss insisted his side must now take heart from recent displays against the likes of Arsenal and Manchester United.

“In the situation we’re in, we can’t look back too much,” he told reporters.

“We need to recover, clearly we need to rejuvenate the boys and get ready for Saturday. We have nine massive points to fight for and we need to make sure we get ready for that.

“We haven’t got enough points to achieve our aim, I don’t think we can afford to lose elsewhere. The (other) teams are going to fight with their lives to get as many points as they can and we’re going to do the same.

“We wanted to get more than 34, the reality is that this is not going to be enough at the present time so we are concentrating on getting as many as we can from the remaining nine games.

“We showed that we can beat anyone and we showed that we can compete at a very good level. We need to make sure we replicate that in the next three games. I believe if we do that we’ll get enough points to achieve our aim.”

Martinez also went on to insist that his side deserved a point and blamed a busy schedule for a lack of concentration towards the end.

“(I’m) disappointed with the result and the manner that the game ended,” he added.

“We knew it was going to be a difficult afternoon, firstly because Fulham are enjoying a very good season.

“They have a lot more time to prepare. We had eight very challenging games in eight days, today was probably a game too many. We lost Franco Di Santo with an injury because of too much football in a short period of time.

“Overall I thought the result was a draw, none of the sides deserved to win and none of the sides deserved to lose.”

Fulham boss Martin Jol said it would have been an injustice for his side to lose the game, given Wigan’s lack of offensive statistics.

“It was not easy playing against them (Wigan). We saw them play against the top sides and they did ever so well.

“I saw them against Arsenal at the Emirates, they play so compact, they don’t give away a lot on the spine (and there is) no space on the flanks so you need to be patient,” Jol said.

“They had zero corners, they had zero chances and they scored out of nothing so it would have been harsh if we would have lost this game.

“The problem is that when you are patient you can fall asleep and they want that. They are very good on the break with (Victor) Moses and that is what they did in all these games against Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, so we were well prepared and in the end I think we deserved to win.”