Gaffer wants team to remember Chelsea victory and make history again

Roberto Martinez is fully aware of the threat his side face on Monday night when Latics take on Liverpool in the Barclays Premier League at the DW Stadium.

The gaffer wants his players to draw on the experience of beating Chelsea at home earlier this season to help win all three points against another of the league's big-boys.

"Liverpool have a few players who have been away on international duty throughout the week and it's been a similar situation for ourselves," said Martinez.

"It's important for us therefore to get the players as ready and as composed for the game as possible. Having that little bit of extra time always helps and we need to make sure we use it in the right manner.

"We know all about the quality Liverpool have in their side, the concepts they use and how strong they are as a team.

"But we're playing at home which gives us a great advantage, we've won big games here already this season, Chelsea being the prime example, and we need to make sure we feel confident about ourselves if we're going to get the result we need.

"There are a lot of points still to play for and there'll be many twists before the end of the season with so many teams involved in the fight.

"We need to make sure that we remain strong and mature going into the end of the season putting together all the lessons we've learned this season."

Martinez also emphasised that although decisions and results haven't been going in Latics' favour recently, the team must concentrate on keeping up the high standards they have set themselves this season to make sure they can have more of an influence on the remaining games in the campaign.

"When other teams are playing before us we have to remain focused on our own games but at the same time realise that those around us may be picking up points.

"But we can't let that affect our performance and we don't want to get to a stage where we're relying on other teams to falter.

At the bottom it's very tight at the bottom, there's eight teams who we're going to be fighting with to avoid relegation but it's important we stay focused and not let results elsewhere get to us.

"On the pitch everything is coming together, it's just trying to find that little bit of confidence and excitement in the last third where we can use the quality we have in the squad to finish teams off.

"We're creating good chances making good opportunities for ourselves but that final pass has just been missing and it's what we've needed to win our games.

"But at the moment we're in a period where it's harder than normal to get a result for a number of reasons, but we need to make sure we get ourselves into a position where we can affect those results and help our confidence to grow.

"But we can't feel sorry for ourselves, we need to make sure that it is us who influence games and that's the attitude we have going into the final third of the campaign."