Peterborough boss Darren Ferguson blamed “schoolboy” defending for his side’s 3-0 defeat at Wigan.
On-loan Nottingham Forest striker Dale Taylor opened the scoring inside 11 minutes and, after England Under-21 goalkeeper Sam Tickle somehow denied Posh an instant leveller with a point-blank save from Kwame Poku, Taylor added his second goal four minutes after the restart.
Callum McManaman put the icing on the cake with a glorious strike into the top corner with nine minutes to go.
“I’m disappointed, as you would expect,” said Ferguson. “Losing 3-0 suggests you’ve been battered, but really in that first half we battered them.
“We’re just not giving ourselves a chance, we’re not giving ourselves a platform. The first two goals are really, really awful goals to concede…schoolboy stuff.
“If teams are playing through us, or coming up with brilliance like the third goal – and Callum McManaman has always had that – then you hold your hands up and admire the quality.
“But when teams are scoring from four yards, with no contact against them, like their first goal, then fundamentally you have a problem.”
On Poku’s miss shortly after Wigan had taken the lead, Ferguson added: “Kwame, I can’t believe he’s missed, he’s got an open goal.
“We then said at half-time that we needed to keep hurting them, keep our discipline, move the ball quickly, which we did, but then we concede again at the start of the second half. It’s the easiest goal that Taylor will score this season.
“I know we have a young back four but that’s not an excuse, I’m not one for making excuses. We’re better than that, we can’t keep conceding goals like that.
“We’ve had 11 games now and we haven’t kept one clean sheet, so it’s staring you in the face really.”
Shaun Maloney hailed a “complete performance” as Wigan ended a run of three goalless draws in a row.
“It was a really important win for us, and a really good performance,” acknowledged Maloney. “I really like Peterborough, they’re a very good side, very difficult to play against, and we kind of needed a bit of everything.
“We had to play with the ball under a lot of pressure, we needed a lot of hard work without the ball, and we needed a massive save from our goalkeeper at 1-0.
“But it was a complete performance, with some brilliant moments.
“I knew this game wasn’t going to be like Exeter, Stevenage or Lincoln, who made it very difficult for us to break them down – which is something we have to get better at.
“Against Peterborough, I knew there would be chances, there would be goals, and it would probably be decided by moments of brilliance.
“We got that at both ends from Sam Tickle and then Callum McManaman, fortunately for us.
“It was never going to be a 0-0, it was always going to be open and it could have been 3-2, 4-2, it was one of those games.”
