Boyce: Latics have won back respect

Wigan were spurred on to victory at Tottenham by the 'mickey-taking' after last year's White Hart Lane drubbing, says defender Emmerson Boyce. Boyce was one of five survivors from November's 9-1 demolition at the hands of Spurs to feature in Saturday's shock 1-0 victory, a result which also helped the Latics put their horrendous start to the Premier League season behind them.For defender Boyce, the outcome was the perfect redemption for last year's debacle, which saw him and his team-mates become the butt of unflattering jokes."Last year hurt us," said the 30-year-old."Getting beaten 9-1 is not nice and a lot of people took the mickey out of us for that, so to come here and keep a clean sheet, I think we got some of our respect back."As well as atoning for last year's corresponding fixture, Wigan made amends for their opening two Premier League games, which saw them ship 10 goals."We want to start our season now," said Boyce."To get a result here and to keep a clean sheet here will hopefully be a springboard for us."Boyce believes Wigan paid the price for being too adventurous in their thrashings by Blackpool and Chelsea, with a far more conservative approach proving successful at White Hart Lane."I think that, at the start of the season, maybe we overplayed and caused ourselves some problems so the manager told us to keep it tight and maybe we can nick a goal."And we carried out our game plan to perfection."But Boyce cautioned Wigan's problems had not been solved overnight."We have got quite a young team and we are still learning how our manager wants to play," the former Crystal Palace right-back said."Like anything, it takes time to develop how the manager wants to play and we are completely different to how we used to be."When I first came down, we were a hard-working team."Now we are passing the ball around more."We have had a couple of hammerings but hopefully we can learn from that."As impressive as Wigan were, Spurs were disappointing in the extreme, Harry Redknapp's men hardly testing visiting goalkeeper Ali Al Habsi until Hugo Rodallega's 80th-minute winner.The performance appeared a classic case of a Champions League hangover following the club's historic progress to the group stage of Europe's elite club competition.But defender Michael Dawson said "I don't think we can put it down to that."They deserve a lot of credit; they had a good game plan. They came and got everyone behind the ball and we just couldn't break them down."It happened a couple of times last year. Stoke came and did the same and Wolves."We'll have a look at it and see where we can improve. I'm sure a few teams will come and do that again."Dawson revealed he could sense an extra determination from Wigan following November's result."Seeing what we did to them last year, they certainly made sure we weren't going to do it to them again."Credit to them, they got everyone behind the ball."Dawson admits Spurs will have to get used to their hectic schedule quickly if they are to compete on all fronts this season."It's what we want to do, it's as simple as that," added Dawson, who felt being booed off at full-time was harsh on Spurs' players."Don't get me wrong, the fans want to win as much as we do."They had such a great night the other night like all of us."We always need them behind us."

Source: Team_Talk