Boss Leam Richardson felt Wigan were good value for their 2-0 victory over 10-man Crewe which moved them four points clear of the League One drop zone with four matches remaining.

A first-half freak goal from Joe Dodoo and a second-half penalty from Lee Evans gave Wigan their third league win in a row for the first time this term.

Crewe’s afternoon was summed up by the straight red card for Omar Beckles for hauling down Callum Lang inside the box for the game-clinching spot-kick.

Richardson said: “It’s very satisfying and I’m so pleased for the players and the staff.

“To get three wins in the space of a week, at such a crucial point in the season, is massive.

“But at the same time, my message is to continue to dampen it because we haven’t achieved anything yet.

“All we’ve done is work very hard and been fortunate enough to land on the right side of the result three times.

“We’ve spoken before about feeling our performance levels had been at a standard that wasn’t being reflected in the points return.

“That sometimes happens in sport and all you can do is continue the hard work and maintain the good habits you’ve created.

“The mindset stays the same and we keep working hard and focusing on the next game, which is Tuesday at Shrewsbury.”

David Artell watched his Crewe side fail to score for the third game in a row after barely having a shot on goal.

He did rue the officials missing a possible penalty towards the end for handball against Curtis Tilt but didn’t feel his men deserved to take anything.

“We didn’t do well enough and our decision-making was poor in the first half,” he said.

“We were better in the second half and even better when we went down to 10 men.

“They scored a goal you see maybe once a season, it’s a fluke.

“We could have had a penalty ourselves, it’s a stonewall one at the end. Would it have affected the result? I don’t know.

“But everything that could have gone wrong for us did go wrong for us.

“I’m a big believer that you make your own luck and we didn’t do enough in the game to earn any.

“Goals win games and I said to our front three at the end ‘How many shots did you have?’

“They had two between them…and it’s just not enough.

“As much as you want to be a good footballer across the rest of the pitch, they get paid to score goals and they’re not scoring goals.

“Don’t get me wrong, we could have got the ball to them a lot more. But when it does get there, we have to be more clinical.”