Scunthorpe boss Neil Cox believes his side’s 2-0 win at Oldham will give some of his younger players a shot of much-needed confidence.

The Iron ended a run of five straight league defeats and eight in all competitions with a deserved win at Boundary Park courtesy of second-half strikes from Jacob Bedeau and Kevin Van Veen.

“It’s certainly been a long time coming since our first win,” said Cox.

“We’ve taken a lot of stick over the past few weeks, but we’ve got a young team and a young squad overall.

“However, we managed to get a bit more experience into the side today and I thought we showed that spirit that we definitely have got in the squad.

“I knew we had it in there, but it’s just been difficult getting that out onto the pitch at times so far this season.

“We’ve worked so hard this week on defending as a team, and attacking as a team, and I thought that worked here today.

“I can’t really remember our goalkeeper Mark Howard having too many saves to make.

“I think we created nine or 10 good chances, and eight in the box, which is excellent.

“This result gives all of the lads a bit of confidence they need, and we’ll take this into Tuesday night’s game against Port Vale and see what happens.”

It was the Iron who probably shaded the first period at Boundary Park

Bedeau was thwarted by Danny Rowe’s goal-line clearance, while Ryan Loft’s smart scissor-kick was superbly saved by Ian Lawlor.

Oldham went closest through the dangerous Dylan Bahamboula but were then undone by Van Veen.

He crossed for Bedeau to open the scoring on the hour mark, then crashed home superbly from 25 yards in the 78th minute after meeting Loft’s back-heel.

Those two goals certainly burst Oldham’s bubble as they had won their previous three games in all competitions, and two of their previous three in the league.

Boss Harry Kewell said: “We created a few chances in the opening 20 minutes and at that point we were looking quite comfortable.

“However, we then let our standards slip and we didn’t really do enough of the nasty things well enough.

“We weren’t fighting hard enough for second balls and we didn’t just keep it simple.

“We then had a couple of chances early in the second half, before we went to sleep after a corner and they score.

“After that we didn’t really look much of a threat.

“They wanted it more than us and that’s why they’ve gone away with the three points.

“We were chasing it towards the end, but the ball just wouldn’t drop for us.

“I can’t fault the overall effort from some of my players, but it’s disappointing because we’ve failed to build on three good performances in our previous three games.

“We just have to keep our chins up and go again now.”