Wigan Athletic managed to close the gap between them and the rest of the other relegation candidates thanks to a well earned win against Bolton Wanderers at the Reebok stadium.

Manager Robert Martinez will have been relieved to have registered 3 points against their North West rivals, as it has been a very long time since his team had enjoyed such a significant boost in their points tally.

They now sit just 1 point behind Bolton, and only 3 points away from safety out of the relegation zone. Due to their fairly abysmal goal difference, Wigan are affectively a point behind their relegation rivals as if they end up on the same amount of points come the end of the season, the chances are they will be the ones to go down, unless they can claw back the difference from their rivals.

Their next few fixtures are definitely games that manager Martinez should be able to make his players believe they have a good chance of picking up points, with Aston Villa, Swansea, and Norwich being their 3 next Premier League games. Villa are a team out of sorts at the moment, with Norwich and Swansea being two teams who have just climbed out of the Championship.

With talented players such as Hugo Rodallega and Victor Moses in their squad, Wigan do have attacking threats within their team, but Martinez undoubtedly has one of the weakest squads in the Premiership to work with.

Some are of the opinion that, despite being fairly unsuccessful with the Latics, Martinez has proven what a quality manager he is but managing to guide his squad away from relegation last year.