The Latics managed a 2-1 win at Gateshead in the first round of the FA Cup on Sunday. Dino Maamria gave his team the thumbs up but the supporters who travelled came back with feeling of being lucky after they scraped the win. However, it doesn't matter how you win, so long as you do.
Maamria commented, “Well, we've gone through and that's the most important thing, let's not forget that. I expected a tough afternoon and we got a tough afternoon and I think they gave us a tough game, but a bit of quality paid off at the end and I thought the second goal probably sums us up. I thought we were very good from set pieces and were quite organised and caused problems from the set plays, but overall we were probably at 60/65% and manage to win the game and that's the most important thing. I expect to take the lead and we expected us to win the game, with no disrespect to them we're two divisions above, we are expected to win it and win it well. Obviously, they're a good team and they have been riding high in the league and I know that they've got a couple of games in hand, but they're a good team and they have got experienced players and it's always a difficult place to come. The biggest positive is how much resilience we showed as a team, that's four games unbeaten now and we'll keep coming back when the tough gets going. We popped up again with goals and we did that when we were under pressure at 1-1. To go and get the second, we did that last week at 2-0 down against Northampton Town so that resilience of the team is definitely changing. But like I said, we had to make a couple of forced changes but the team we had out there managed to win the game and that's the most important thing.”
“I think that the difference was probably we didn't match their work rate, as they worked a little bit harder than us which is unforgivable, so we're going to have a good look at the game. We had to win the game and dig deep at 60/65% and we need to do better to win properly in our league, so we have to improve and we realise that as a group we need to improve. We're making small steps forward, like I said, it's four games unbeaten now, two wins and two draws and it's positive and what we've got to do is keep building on that. We must take the win and not get carried away with it as we've got to go back next week and work harder to be ready for next week. It's probably credit to him [Zeus De la Paz] that we're into the next round and I think we scored two good goals which we worked on in the training ground. But Zeus was fantastic and he did what he's supposed to do and it's brilliant to have a goalkeeper between the sticks who's got that quality. He keeps getting better and hopefully he'll keep getting better and better. I want to thank our fans. They turned up in numbers today and I'm glad we won the game for them and, hopefully, we're looking forward to the draw and we get a home tie in the next round.”