OLDHAM Athletic manager Pete Wild said his side's performance in both boxes held the key to their impressive 2-0 win at Colchester United.

The Latics struck twice in the opening 13 minutes through Alex Iacovitti and Callum Lang and then defended superbly, to secure a third successive win in League Two.

Wild said: "There's a sheet in there that says 'dominate both boxes' and I thought we did it well.

"That's a big tick in the box.

"Defensively, we've kept three clean sheets in a week so they should be immensely proud of themselves.

"Pete (Clarke) is the skipper and leads from the front and I thought we saw that in abundance."

Wild has led Oldham to three straight wins and they are now five points off the play-off places, with a game in hand on most of the teams above them.

The Latics face Swindon Town next but boss Wild is not looking too far ahead, with his side ready for their final six games of the season.

“A week ago we were 16th and we’re now 11th," said Wild, who succeeded Paul Scholes in the hot seat at Boundary Park, last month.

“But we’re not getting carried away and the play-offs are not in my mind.

“Swindon is in my mind because if you start thinking ‘we’ll win here or we’ll win there’ you end up getting egg on your face.

“We’ll just take one game at a time and see where it takes us.

“We’ve given ourselves a chance now but we’re not going to get carried away.

“We’re working hard and we’re trying our best.

“We’ll just keeping working hard and what we’ve said to the boys is that we’ve just got to take each game as it comes and if we do well and work hard, we’ve always got a chance.

“We’ve had two massive games in a week and the boys are tired so to hurt them early and then put in some resolute defending and defend our own box is what good teams do.

“We did that well on Tuesday night (against Tranmere) and we did it well again today.

“The goalkeeper coach has just told me that they had 18 corners and for us to withstand them and them not look like scoring, so it’s happy days.”