Neil Critchley's immediate reaction to Blackpool's defeat to Wigan Athletic as he discusses League One play-off race

The Seasiders struggled to open up their opponents throughout the match, but didn’t do enough to find an equaliser after Scott Smith’s goal in the first half.

Critchley’s side still only remain three points off sixth place, despite falling behind Lincoln City and Oxford United following their victories, while Leyton Orient remain in the hunt following their win over Stevenage.

“When you lose any game it’s frustrating- especially at Wigan when you’ve got a good following and it’s classed as a derby game, it hurts,” said the Blackpool boss.

"It was a fine line, and it was always going to be like that. If you look at some of their recent results, they’re low-scoring games and the first goal is decisive. In the second half we were by far the dominant team, and pinned them back. It’s not easy to break down 11 players, but we still created some really good opportunities, and when you do you’ve got to take them, but we didn’t. Overall, we deserved a point from the game.

"You’re not going to come here and dominate for 90 minutes because they’re a good team with good players, and they play really good possession football. They cause teams a lot of problems with how they play. They had a chance from a corner and the goal- that was it in the first half. We didn’t do enough then, but there wasn’t much in the game.

"We spoke about crossing from deeper and getting bodies in there. The game changed in our favour with momentum and territory, and we had two or three good opportunities, we just needed to take one of them. Our quality and intelligence of how we use the ball let us down.

"There’s seven games to go, hopefully we can make it exciting, there’s be twists and turns- we’re in there. Today was disappointing but that’s football sometimes, we have to dust ourselves down. I didn’t see anything that led me to believe we won’t be right there until the end of the season.”