My midfield role felt so strange

The Latics star writes for Chron Sport every week
IF ONLY I was a betting man!

I hoped we would be sitting on 21 points going into this weekend - and that has turned out to be spot-on, following two brilliant away results.

It has been a tough few weeks, with numerous matches in a short space of time. But we couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. And with the massive home game against Bradford City falling on Sunday, it gives us an extra day of recovery to make sure we are all fresh.

Looking back at the Gillingham contest, I thought the boys showed great character to see the game out and keep a clean sheet after the dismissal of Genseric Kusunga.

It was a result that we thoroughly deserved having had the majority of possession and the better sights at goal during the 90 minutes on a very poor pitch.

I played as a sub with about 15 minutes left, only to find myself in centre midfield a couple of minutes later as the gaffer shuffled the pack to deal with Kusunga’s sending-off.

It was a very unusual feeling to be playing out of position, but I managed to deal with it reasonably well, with regular midfielder James Wesolowski talking me through it.

The manager dipped into the loan market after the injury to Cristian Montano, bringing in young Mikey Petrasso from QPR.

An 18-year-old lad making his full league debut - having only trained with us on the Friday before Gillingham - must have been a bit nervous; but credit to him as he was our match winner. It was a day he will never forget.

The vibe around the club is the best since I have been here; the changing room was brimming with confidence as we went into another away fixture, this time against Shrewsbury Town.

We met in the early stages of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy in which we were comfortable winners, but it was a totally different story this time round.

I found myself in the starting X1 for the first time in nearly six weeks as the boss made a few changes to freshen it up a bit and rest some players’ legs.

After struggling to impose ourselves on the game we went a goal behind due to a defensive mix-up. We had no complaints at that point, as we had been second best all over the pitch.

The gaffer made an early substitution, bringing on Jonson Clarke-Harris, and straight away it gave us that physical presence we had been lacking against a big, strong team.

We managed to go in at half-time on level terms after Anton Rogers produced an incisive through ball for me to race clear and tie things up.

It was a great time to score, just before the break, and gave us a platform from which to build for the second period.

It wasn’t a pleasant team talk at the interval, but we knew we had been nowhere near the benchmark we had set ourselves. But while we still weren’t great in the second half, we got the all-important three points and became an Oldham Athletic side boasting the club’s best run of results in the last seven years, which is a fantastic achievement.