Micky Mellon: Town got punished all over
Manager Micky Mellon was happy with Shrewsbury Town's display for an hour - but admitted they got punished "all over the place" in the 5-1 defeat to Wigan.
Three goals in nine second-half minutes turned the game in the dominant Latics' favour.
Yanic Wildschut (58), Jason Pearce (61) and Will Grigg's 66th-minute penalty extended Wigan's unbeaten run to 19 league games.
Grigg made it 5-1 in the third minute of time added on to inflict Town's 11th and heaviest home league defeat of the season.
Remarkably, Sullay Kaikai's sixth goal in as many games and 11th in 20 matches had given Town a 29th-minute lead, only for superb on-loan Everton midfielder Conor McAleny to cancel that out within four minutes.
To compound Shrewsbury's misery, Junior Brown limped off with a knee injury after 51 minutes and Zak Whitbread was sent off on his recall from injury for bringing down Grigg for the penalty.
That left Mellon with his two most experienced centre backs suspended for next week's trip to Millwall as Nathaniel Knight-Percival started a three-match ban today.
Mellon said: "I thought up to about an hour we were fine - we started the second half probably better - then pretty much everything that could go against did.
"We lost a runner from a throw-in, then we conceded a goal from a corner, then we were down to 10 men and by then it was going to be tough for us.
"From our point of view, we were punished all over the place.
If you play against teams at the top end and you get done by those little fine margins that make the difference at times, you get punished and that's what happened and why we lost.
"So you have to move on very quickly, and realise we've been very good for nine games and an hour."
Whitbread was sent off for bringing down Grigg in the box and Mellon admitted it made life very difficult for Town.
He said: "I don't know if the referee saw he was the last man - if that's the case, I can't argue with that, but it put us in a really difficult position against a team like Wigan.
"So that made it more difficult for us. And we lost Junior (Brown) - it looks like a sore knee injury so pretty much everything that went against us did.
"I don't want to take anything away from Wigan because they punished us heavily."
Wigan went top after extending their unbeaten run to 19 games and Mellon believes the result needs to be put result in perspective.
The Town boss said: "I think you've got to look at it like that - they're a very good side but we're disappointed to lose any game.
"We'll look at the performance and certain things that went wrong and we'll continually try to improve this group."
