Maloney views Hughes' red card against Barnsley as '50-50 moment'

Latics arrived into this contest on the back of a 4-0 thumping of rivals Bolton the week before, and would have been top of Sky Bet League One if it wasn’t for their eight point deduction for financial reasons.

However, they were dealt a huge blow on 21 minutes when Charlie Hughes was shown red for bringing down Barnsley front man Devante Cole.

Barnsley took the lead soon after and although Maloney’s men showed plenty of heart with 10 men, they were unable to peg back the visitors.

Maloney was keen to draw a line under Latics’ first defeat in the league this term and put things right on Monday.

He said: “It’s a difficult decision. I’ve seen one angle of it and I can’t decide whether he’s got the ball or the player, so it looked a little bit 50-50.

“I don’t want to complain too much about decisions, sometimes they go for you and this instance it’s gone against us.

“It had a big impact in terms of how the game went, but that’s football and sometimes these things go against you.

“The flow of the game changed immediately after the red card. I’m not overly positive generally after defeats, but for half an hour or so in the second half we had to play under big pressure.

“I let them know that I didn’t care if there was a mistake, we had to play under pressure to get back into it and for 30 minutes I think we did that.

“I can’t be critical of the second goal, we went all out to try and get a goal and physically the team was spent. The last five or six minutes were open and I can’t be critical.

“It’s tough to say positive things after a defeat.

“I know you’ll get managers who want to be positive even when it’s not, but I did think even after Bolton that there were areas that I thought we could improve on.

“It’s been a good start and this hurts, so we have to remember how this feels and get back to work on Monday.”