Athletic suffered their most humiliating defeat in almost nine years when they crashed 6-0 at home to Southampton on Tuesday night. Latics manager Paul Dickov was philosophical when his after match comments revealed, “We were second best all over the pitch and it was men against boys. Southampton are a very good team and looked fitter and stronger than us and had better players on the night. It is a big learning curve for us all, me especially, and after a defeat like that everybody has to look at themselves. There will be a lot of soul searching to do to find out what went wrong. We came up against a team which was fitter, stronger and better on the night and they should be a benchmark for a lot of our players. We are a young group which has done alright so far, but may be we are a touch naive. We are always going to have setbacks, but it is how you react to them.”
“We won't shirk away from things and will stand up and be accountable as to what has happened. We will assess what has happened and sit the players down as a team and individually and go through everything. We need to learn from it individually and as a team, management and staff as well. We will all learn and be better for it. Everyone is down and disappointed but it has gone and we cannot change what has happened and can only change what happens in the future. I see what they do and give me every day in training. It won't always happen for you and sometimes you learn more about yourself when things are not going well."