Let's build on cup victory - Dickov
Latics are keen to build on their success in the FA Cup with Budweiser in tomorrow’s npower League One match at Colchester United.
Paul Dickov doesn’t want the cup triumph to be a false dawn as climbing the league table – they are currently 16th - remains a priority.
Latics’ manager has vowed not to allow this to happen declaring: "What happened last Saturday lets me get on top of the players and not let them get carried away.
"If they think everything is rosy, that is when they get complacent and that is when we are at our worst."
Dickov added there was plenty of positives to take from last Saturday’s victory against Doncaster.
He said: "We have taken confidence from last Saturday and also the confidence from winning three of our last four games.
"We need to get some consistency to our play because we are where we are because of the results we have picked up.
"We have shown at times what a good team we can be and also how poor we can be.
"It is all about consistency and, if you are not going to win the game, we have to make sure we don’t lose."
Dickov points to the six league games they have lost by a single goal adding that had they managed to turn them into draws or wins their league position would be far healthier.
He added that Colchester is never an easy place to go to as demonstrated last season when Latics suffered a 4-1 defeat at the Weston Homes Community Stadium.
Since then John Ward has been replaced by Joe Dunne as manager and Dickov has noticed a difference in the way they play.
"Colchester are always tough to play against at their place. Joe has taken over and changed the way they play. They try to get the ball down and to play football as he tried to stamp his style of play on the team," he explained.
The U’s and Latics are 17th and 16th respectively and both on 23 points from 20 league games.
Dickov added that form in League One tends to go out of the window, whether good or bad, as Latics have discovered in the current campaign.
He says anybody can beat anybody in the division and a key to success is attitude.
"We have to take all the good things from last Saturday, but you don’t win games unless you roll up your sleeves and get stuck in which is what we have to go first and foremost," he continued.
Colchester’s form has been as inconsistent and erratic as Latics.
They failed to win in their first nine competitive matches of the campaign, a sequence of results which cost Ward his job.
Colchester enjoyed a revival under Dunne winning five out of six games before lapsing again. They currently have only one win in seven games with one of those losses at non-league Chelmsford in the FA Cup. In their last two matches they have lost 3-1 at home to Coventry City and 5-1 at MK Dons.
Latics don’t have a good record at Colchester where they have not won on their last seven visits. Their last triumph was in September 2002 in the days when they were still at their old Layer Road ground so what better time to put that right tomorrow.