The Latics head to Brunton Park on Tuesday night with the Cumbrians in search of their first three points of the season under the spotlights and hopefully in front of a big crowd.
“We want that first win, that’s what we’re here for,” gaffer Paul Simpson said. “We want to win games of football so it is very frustrating at the moment.
“We’ve done close to enough to get a result and we haven’t got it yet. That means the top and bottom of it is that we haven’t done enough. That’s what we have to deal with.
“We’ll look at the positives from Saturday as things to build on, but I’ll have to look at the negatives as well, at why it happened, what we can do differently.”
“It’s another great game to look forward to,” he added. “We had a magnificent crowd for our first game and the more we can get in the better.
“It keeps pushing the club forward, it keeps building us, and it gives the players something to go and work for, like they did at the weekend, in front of those supporters.
“They were magnificent down there. What a great number, I didn’t see what the number was, but you can see them there and I think they stayed to the end.
“When the players went over to show their appreciation they stuck with it as well. We have got to stick together. I knew this was going to be tough, we’ve gone up a level, and we’ve just got to keep going together and hope we get through it.”
Speaking more about the midweek opponents, he said: “We’ve got to enjoy the opportunity. We’ve got a great game to look forward to against a team who have been up in the heady heights over the last few years, and they’ve had their problems.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re ready for it. Whatever team gets picked they’ve got to show the enthusiasm, show the desire and go and give it their best shot in front of what I would imagine will be a really enthusiastic home crowd.
“Let’s hope we can get a good crowd in, let’s hope we get a performance that makes the crowd want to come back. I think the people who turned up for our game against Fleetwood saw that we’re trying to do things properly.
“We’ve just got to hope we can do it well enough and it gets us that first win on the board and calms everybody down.
“Brunton Park’s a fantastic place on a night, when it’s getting dark and you get the lights on and get the crowd behind us, it’s a good place to be. We’ve got to do everything to make it a very good place on Tuesday.”
And in terms of managing the fitness of his players, he commented: “With Fin Back, we need to make contact with Forest to see where they think he’s at, but if Fin can’t play we’ve got an able replacement who can come in for him.
“I thought it was a real high energy performance on Saturday, and it’s a case of whether or not we feel as though we need to change anything to freshen it up.
“We’ll look at it and pick a team that we think will get us that we win we all want.”