Wigan Athletic guest column - Sam Morsy

But in games like that, towards the end of the season, you have to try not to be pumped up, but be calmer than usual.

The way we play, we like to take the sting out of the game, relax, move the ball around well.

Against a footballing side, there’s only going to be one winner, and thankfully it worked that way.

It wasn’t a typically Rochdale type of performance, to be fair.

They tried to hit the front man, then run off him, and that’s always difficult to play against.

But we managed to match them physically, which allowed our footballing quality to shine through.

The win took us back to the top of the league, and I think the table’s been a little bit misleading for a while.

At one point we had four games in hand on the leaders, which wasn’t a fair reflection of where we were at.

After the Portsmouth game, when I think we did enough to get something, the job was to get on another winning run.

We’ve managed to do that in emphatic fashion, and we now have two home games coming up and we’ll look to take advantage.

That said, Blackburn and Shrewsbury aren’t showing signs of going away, and credit to them.

As far as we’re concerned, our mentality has always been to just concentrate on ourselves, win our games, and that will take care of itself.

The squad’s healthy, we had four different scorers on Tuesday night, so everyone in the squad is standing up to be counted.

Possibly the only disappointment was not quite holding on for the clean sheet.

But that happens in football, you can’t be too annoyed about stuff like that.

To win 4-1 away from home is something you’d take every day of the week.

We’ve now got 86 points, with six games to go, which speaks for itself.

I know some fans have been looking at 100 points, but all we can do is take every game as it comes.

If it comes it comes, but there’s a long way to go yet.

No game is easy at this level, especially when you get into the last month of the season.

But our home crowd will have a big part to play in the last six games.

It was the loudest I’ve heard them in quite a long time at Rochdale.

And we hope they’ll be there in their numbers again this weekend.

On one hand we’re still a long way from where we want to be.

But on the other hand it’s getting closer and closer, and we just need to get ourselves over that line.

I’ve also hopefully got the World Cup to look forward to at the end of the season.

And it’s just about working hard in every game, every session, every minute, to make sure I’m a part of it.

That’s all you can do. After that, whatever happens, happens.

I’m hearing very positive things whenever I go back and join up with the Egypt set-up, but you just try and keep your head down.

Being away the other week was an unbelievable experience again.

You try and watch all of the others closely, to see if there’s anything you can pick up, to add to your game.

Obviously there’s one world-class player in particular – Mo Salah – who you can’t help but learn from.

He was at it again the other night, and it just shows how good a player he is.

I’ve seen Liverpool a few times this season, and on their day they’re anything they want to be.

They’re in the last four of the Champions League now, and they’ve got a great chance of winning it.

Salah’s form is obviously a big reason why they’re doing so well, and he’s loving life at Liverpool.

I’ve sat down and chatted with him, and one of the big things he said was playing at Anfield.

He gets his energy from the crowd, he just loves playing there – like they all do.

Players like him are just different class, and it’s not just ability – it’s also the attitude and mentality.

I know some people might find this hard to believe, but it’s the ones who are playing in the Premier League, earning the crazy money, who are often the most humble ones.

It’s frightening – and a little bit different to the English mentality.

It’s so refreshing, and a great example to us all about how you should be.

Sadly, I won’t be part of the World Cup in one aspect – the Panini football stickers!

Obviously I used to collect the albums as a kid, and I was hoping to make it in there.

It was gutting to miss the cut, but what can you do? That’s life.

I might need to do a DIY sticker obviously, get that out there...we’ll see!

Sam Morsy was speaking to Paul Kendrick