Ryan Lowe pleased with Tranmere Rovers win as Wigan Athletic boss reflects on positive pre-season

A header from James Carragher in the first half saw Latics secure a 1-0 win over Tranmere at Prenton Park on Saturday afternoon.

“It was good,” Lowe said post-match. “Some of the lads played 60, some played 75, and some played 30 and 15.

“It was about getting the minutes up with it being the final game of pre-season. I thought the lads equipped themselves well, and it was good to get a clean sheet and a goal from a set play.

"There were some other opportunities for us to score as well, but it wasn’t through the lack of trying.

“I am really pleased - pre-season is done and dusted now, and we’ll hopefully have a good week.

"We’ll have some bodies back with us, which is nice, and it’s then about building for Northampton at home.”

Latics head into Saturday’s League One opener against Northampton Town in good spirits, having gone unbeaten through their pre-season programme, beating Chorley (2-1) Accrington (4-2) and Tranmere (1-0), whilst drawing with Curzon Ashton (1-1) in Spain.

"You always want to go into a new campaign on the back of an unbeaten pre-season,” said Lowe.

"We started where we left off last season in terms of being unbeaten, it’s nice to get goals, we kept the clean sheet, which is always nice.

"I thought Tranmere were fantastic today, they moved the ball, they’re effective in what they do, they go back to front in certain spells, its not just kick it forward and run forward, they’ve got some little passages of play which we had to deal with which was good - but the pre-season has been excellent.

"We’ve had a couple of niggling injuries, hopefully we’ll have them all back on the grass and to go pre-season unbeaten looks good, and you want to try to have that feeling as much as you possibly can throughout the season."

Wigan host Northampton in the opening game of the 2025/26 League One campaign at the Brick Community Stadium on Saturday, 3pm kick-off.