Bromley interim boss Byron Webster gutted as Wigan take the spoils

Bromley interim boss Byron Webster admitted Wigan’s winning goal in a five-goal thriller at the Brick Community Stadium – which saw his side slip to the foot of Sky Bet League One – was “a real kick where it hurts”.

The visitors had taken a sixth-minute lead through Kamarl Grant, but Wigan responded through Christian Saydee and K’Marni Miller to lead by the midway point in the first half.

George Saville levelled the scores in first-half stoppage time, but Wigan forced home what proved to be the winning goal through Brad Burrowes 13 minutes after the restart.

“There were parts of it that were good, but when you’re not getting the results, the confidence becomes low and the goals we conceded were poor,” said Webster.

“As you go up the leagues, you will get punished and we do seem to be getting punished a lot recently.

“Teams are not having to work hard enough to score goals against us and it’s not for the want of
trying from the players.

“It’s just the phase we’re in at the moment, where we seem to be getting punished for every single mistake we do.

“And it hurts, it really hurts… to concede a third goal like that, it’s a real kick where it hurts.

“It looked like an easy goal to deal with, to clear. But it’s gone in.

“In the last 15 minutes, we got to it, we were pressing higher up and you could see the momentum was swinging.

“There are a lot of positives at the moment, but the positives are kind of irrelevant.

“We just need that little bit of luck, or quality, to go our way.”

Wigan moved up three places with only their third league win of the season, and boss Gary Caldwell was delighted and relieved in equal measure.

“It’s why you play the game,” he said. “Before the game, I asked the players if they had friends and family here today, and why did they come to watch them?

“They all said to support us, but also to see us win.

“So I told them to make sure they all saw us win today and I thought it was a thoroughly deserved victory, albeit with some very difficult moments within the performance.

“Some of our play was exceptional, we scored three goals – which is a huge bonus – but clearly we have to get better at certain situations within our defensive moments in the game.

“When you’ve been struggling to score goals and struggling to win games and you go an early goal down to a team that’s set in a medium-to-low block, they’re going to make it very difficult for you.

“I think that asked a big question of our belief in how we play as a football team, our mentality and we answered that question emphatically in the way we responded.

“To score the two goals was great, but we could have scored more in that period – and we have to be even more ruthless – because we then conceded a second goal and came in at half-time at 2-2 when we should have been out of sight.”