Wigan Athletic hero enjoying being last man standing

In the absence of the injured Kyle Joseph and the self-isolating Jamie Proctor, boss Leam Richardsion entrusted Lang to lead the line in the big six-pointer at Northampton.

And after taking the battle to the home defence all night, he popped up with the only goal eight minutes from the end with a cool finish after taking advantage of a defensive error.

"Leam told me to play on the shoulder and that's how it worked out for me in that moment," acknowledged Lang.

"I'm happy to work as that lone striker, I enjoy doing that job up against defenders.

"It's tough when you're playing against a back three but, with the support of Keano (Will Keane) and Thelo (Aasgaard), I enjoyed it, and I think we made our impact on the game.

"Given the conditions, it was always going to be a game of few chances.

"Luckily it dropped nicely for me to get on the end of and score the winner."

The result saw Latics climb two places to fourth-bottom, with only goal difference keeping them in the drop zone ahead of Saturday's trip to Oxford.

"We know what we need to do as a team to achieve our challenge," he added. "It's something we need to do every game from now on.

"A lot of lads have come into the group over the last few weeks, including myself, and sometimes it takes a while for players to gel together and know each others' game.

"It's been a few weeks now and we need to start making that process work a bit quicker because we need to get more results.

"We battled hard at Northampton, but we need to make sure we keep it up."

Get 20% off our sports subscription package and stay up to date with all the latest Wigan Athletic news with a year’s subscription to WiganToday for less than 9p a day. Use promo code TRANSFER20