Wigan Athletic guest column - Gavin Massey

Thankfully this one’s nowhere near as bad as the first one, and it’ll be weeks rather than months.

I must admit when it went I did think the worst, and that I would be out for three months again.

But it’s not actually the same injury as I did last time, we’ve had the scans and it’s not the same problem.

That’s obviously a massive positive, and hopefully it won’t be long before I’m back in the swing again.

The annoying thing is I felt so good to be back, I got right back into it.

The longer the games were going on, the stronger I was feeling - especially the Sheffield United game, where it all went wrong.

I was happy with my performance levels having been out for so long, but it’s just unfortunate these things come along.

I can’t afford to get down again.

I just need to get my head down, work as hard as I can to get back and go again. I’m already back on the bike, and out doing very light work on the grass.

Obviously the boys got the win against Aston Villa at the weekend, and it was no more than what we deserved to be fair.

I feel some of the results of late have looked a lot worse than the performances we’ve put in – against Sheffield United, I thought we battered them first half – and against Swansea, we should have been out of sight by half-time.

The result against Villa had been coming, and to be able to put in a performance like that against such a big side shows what this group is capable of.

You see the players we’ve got still to come back – and Crackers coming back in at the weekend and scoring – and it underlines the strength in depth we have here.

No-one’s been panicking with the run of results, in-house we’ve remained as positive as we could.

Obviously the last few months have been difficult, but confidence levels have stayed pretty high.

The first goal in matches is so important, and you saw what happened when we managed to get it.

Look back to Sheffield United, having played so well early on, it’s difficult to take falling behind.

Against Villa we managed to get our noses in front and thankfully we were able to take it from there.

It wasn’t a case of holding on, it was a case of pushing for more goals, and that shows what we’re like as a group.

We’ve played and beaten some big teams this year and that underlines the belief we have at the club.

Next up is Sheffield Wednesday this weekend, and we showed on the opening day of the season (a 3-2 victory at the DW) what we can do to them.

With a full week’s training ahead of games – in contrast to the Christmas fixtures – it gives us chance to prepare properly...and we feel we can benefit from that.