‘I heard they wanted 100 points’: Wigan Athletic boss celebrates season high as he pays tribute to Portsmouth’s champions

Shaun Maloney believes Wigan’s performance scaled a season’s high as they ended the champion’s unbeaten run.

But the Latics boss paid tribute to the League One title winners, after picking up a 2-1 win at Fratton Park.

Wigan were good value for their victoru with John Mousinho’s men looking jaded after being crowned champions and the ensuing celebrations this week.

The visitors were 1-0 up and could’ve been further ahead at the break, before Pompey finished strongly and keeper Sam Tickle made a number of stops to preserve the win.

That stopped Mousinho’s side being able to hit 100 points, which was a motivation of sorts going into the match for the Blues as their 17-game unbeaten sequence came to a close.

Maloney told Wigan Today: 'It was a game of two halves again, the first half was probably the best we've played all season against a very good side, I thought we were absolutely brilliant.

'If anything, we should have been more than one goal up, and then the game's very, very different. We had to hang on a bit in the last 20 minutes, but again it was two sides of a performance.

'I read what Portsmouth said before the game, I heard they wanted 100 points, they were on a very long winning run.

'But we also wanted to win the game, we had a lot of fans travelling a very long way, and we wanted to send them home with three points.

'I say it every week how much they mean to the club, the players and to me, they really mean a lot, and I'm really glad we could give them the result they wanted.

'We had a lot of chances apart from the goals, we caused them a lot of trouble in those wide areas. Being over critical we should put more of those chances away, we were that good.

'And the second half was the complete opposite, we relied on our goalkeeper again to make some amazing saves, we had to put heads in where it hurt.'

Maloney had words of praise for Pompey, who he felt were worthy title winners and had a player who was a Wigan man as recently as January in Callum Lang.

He added: 'We've shown what we can do against the very best team in this division, we know where we need to improve.

'They've been the best team in the league across the whole season, very efficient, and they do both sides of the game very well.

'They got plenty of players into our box at the end, but they can also play. Well done to the coaching team, well done to the owners, they've invested wisely, and we're obviously all pleased Langy has gone up.'