Gary Bowyer urges Burton squad to embrace winning feeling after Wigan victory

Burton boss Gary Bowyer urged his players to “absorb the feeling” of moving off the bottom of Sky Bet League One after their 2-1 victory at Wigan.

The Latics had taken the lead after 32 minutes through Thelo Aasgaard, but Burton’s responded within two minutes through Jon Dadi Bodvarsson.

Rumarn Burrell scored what proved to be the winning goal just before the hour mark, with Burton dodging a bullet late on when Dale Taylor hit a post for Wigan.

The result sees Burton climb above Cambridge on goal difference into 23rd spot – and delighted the 45 Brewers fans, who travelled up to the Brick Community Stadium to support their side.

“It feels really good, and we’ve told that to the players in the dressing room… just absorb that feeling we’ve got now,” said Bowyer.

“I was buzzing for the away support tonight. It’s obviously not a nice night to travel up, but for them to make that effort… we’re all fully appreciative of their efforts.

“Right from the start, I thought our game plan worked well and the only time it didn’t work well, we got punished for it.

“Their lad (Aasgaard) is in fantastic form, we identified that before the game, but the response was really good.

“The equaliser gave everyone a sense of belief and I thought we had another couple of great opportunities, which we might have done better with.

“It’s a great win for us and this has to be the launchpad for us now.

“It’s only been seven games I’ve been here, and I’m still learning about players, formation wise, who we can bring into the building.

“Our goal is to keep on improving and keep on getting better. That’s what we’re demanding of them and that’s what we need to do.

“Let’s enjoy this one, and we should do, with the efforts we gave, but we can’t get too excited and give each other lovebites and pats on the back.”

For Wigan boss Shaun Maloney, it was back to square one after a recent resurgence.

“I said a few things to the players in the dressing room and obviously I have to look at myself as well. Did I pick the right team?” said Maloney, who made six changes to the side that won at Stevenage on Saturday.

“But I didn’t feel we defended our box anywhere near good enough. Their first goal was really, really disappointing.

“The amount of players we had in the box was positive, but their positions just weren’t right. And also with the ball, I just felt we lost our way a bit.

“The way Burton set up, it’s really tough to play through them. Sometimes you can play one pass to break them down, other times it’s six or seven, maybe 10.

“I think we lost our way a little bit and, when we started to force things a bit, we left ourselves open on the counter attack.

“Their first goal, it just shouldn’t happen. The player that gets the first contact for them, I think there’s four players – three of our back four – around him.

“We work very hard on that and we got that badly wrong; really, really wrong.”