Wigan dropped back to the bottom of the table after a heavy defeat against in-form Arsenal.

Latics began brightly but were undone by two goals in two minutes just before the half-hour mark as first Mikel Arteta's shot evaded Ali Al Habsi's grasp and then Thomas Vermaelen nodded in a corner.

Arsenal always looked likely to add to their lead in the second half and in the 61st minute Gervinho made it three before Robin Van Persie added his customary goal 12 minutes from time after good work from Theo Walcott.

Wigan boss Roberto Martinez said: "I thought we started really well. The first 10 or 15 minutes we created problems and I felt we were going to grow really well into the game.

"Everything you do in a football game is to score goals, and in the same manner conceding the goals we conceded today makes performances very difficult.

"The two goals are really soft and they are really close to each other, and I felt that affected us too much. That's probably the real disappointment.

"We all know Arsenal have got a real quality squad and real experience but giving them a two-goal cushion helped them to use their experience and control the tempo of the game, and we made it a little bit easy.

"In the second half we started brightly again but we weren't ourselves, we couldn't reach the level we reached in the last two games, and we cannot keep conceding goals like we did today.

"We conceded early goals against Sunderland and Blackburn and we got back into the games, but when you're playing against top-class opposition you need to be a little bit harder to beat."

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