Gareth Ainsworth urges Shrewsbury to believe after fightback at Wigan

Shrewsbury manager Gareth Ainsworth could not hide his pride at the way his side fought back to secure a 2-2 draw at Wigan in League One.

The home side dominated the first hour, with Thelo Aasgaard and Dale Taylor giving them a two-goal lead they thoroughly warranted.

However, struggling Shrewsbury were given a lifeline midway through the second half when Wigan centre-back Will Aimson diverted a right-wing cross past a helpless Sam Tickle.

And Tickle himself made a very rare mistake with three minutes left when he fumbled the ball, allowing substitute George Lloyd to fire home from close range.

Despite the Shrews remaining bottom of the table, nine points from safety, Ainsworth believes it was a massive step forward in the fight against the drop.

“It’s not the result, it’s not the 2-2 that pleases me the most, it’s the being 2-0 down and coming back to 2-2,” he said.

“These boys just have to believe, and they have to have the confidence, to be able to eradicate the little mistakes they’re making, because there’s still one or two things we need to work on.

“We’re making very important mistakes in very important areas of the pitch, which is obviously disappointing. But what I will say is the spirit of every single player who got on that bus today was superb, and that’s what got them the result.

“I’m delighted because the boys have worked so hard in training, they’ve done absolutely everything I’ve asked of them, to try to be better.

“And this result is justification for all of that hard work, and belief in what we’re trying to do here.

“We kept it together in the first half and were only 1-0 down at half-time, and I’m saying that’s progress, because we’ve collapsed in the first half of some games.

“To come away to Wigan the Saturday before Christmas, I bet some wives may not be getting the present they want because of this game, but the fans got the point which we all wanted.”

For Wigan boss Shaun Maloney, it was two points tossed away.

“I’m gutted really, but also that is football,” he said.

“For 60 minutes we were pretty much in control of the game, until about five minutes before they scored.

“In fairness to Shrewsbury, they showed a very good mentality in trying to get the ball into our box, and they’ve got some good players.

“I’m gutted from our point of view that we’ve let the game slip. It definitely feels like we’ve left two points out there.

“The way we were controlling the game and we stopped building up the way we wanted to.

“That meant we started to go a bit longer than we had been doing, and the game becomes more 50-50, which doesn’t suit us.

“We’ve got some really talented players, but I’ll be honest, Shrewsbury are probably better than us when it gets like that.

“Some of the substitutions we made were more physical than tactical, but the biggest thing was we stopped what we had been doing to get us into a winning position.”