Defender urges team to put Bolton result to bed and focus on beating Villa

Emmerson Boyce insists that the club must forget about Saturday's defeat to Bolton and approach Tuesday night's clash with Aston Villa in the right frame of mind and with a positive attitude.

Latics showed last Monday how turning up mentally prepared as well as physically prepared can bring fantastic results, a lesson Boyce believes needs to be revisited tomorrow:

"Aston Villa is a massive club and a very good team, but if we go into that game feeling sorry for ourselves then we'll end up getting beat," said Boyce.

"It's good to be able to put the Bolton result behind us and focus on the next game so soon, hopefully getting the right result.

"We don't really think about back-to-back wins so much as finding consistency in our performances. Winning well one week and letting ourselves down the next is the worrying aspect at the moment and it's something that has to put right soon, once we get that consecutive wins will come.

"We're still confident we can pull away from a relegation battle in plenty of time and enjoy the rest of the season.

"There's a few games still left to play this season and we've got to roll up our sleeves, dig-in and fight turning performances into results.

"It's getting pretty tight at that end of the table and we don't want to be down there going into the final three games fighting a relegation battle.

"We can't rely on other teams we have to learn to keep our fate in our hands and win the game we need to win. It was nice to get the win over Liverpool but this was the game we had to win, we've got Villa now on Tuesday night and another massive one on Saturday against Burnley, games we have to get good points out of."

Boyce summed up the painful defeat at the Reebok Stadium disappointed with the team performance and apologetic to the 2,000 travelling fans:

The defender said: "They got a bit of luck when they needed it, I wasn't too sure at the time whether it was a penalty or not but the referee gave it and it was important that we dealt with it.

"It's a bitter pill to take but we've got to learn quickly, we can't perform one week and then not the next and that's what we spoke about in the changing room after the game.

"We have to say sorry to the fans, they travelled to Bolton in good numbers hoping for a good result and we let them down. We didn't turn up or perform to the best of our ability and overall it was a very disappointing day."