Beaten into submission

Photo: Pictures by ALAN HOWARTH

Liam Kelly wins the ball.

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Updated match report, with more pictures  by Matthew Chambers

Oldham 0, Preston 4

AS MISMATCHES go, this was up there with the time a Southampton side featuring Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain knocked Athletic for six four years ago.

In the yellow corner were heavyweight Preston, their squad packed to the rafters with experienced and potent strikers and with a defence boasting four straight clean sheets in Sky Bet League One.

In the blue corner were lightweight Athletic, a manager down after Lee Johnson's ship-jumping to Barnsley and with a playing staff so pulverised by injuries that Jack Tuohy was pulled from the under-18s game the same morning at half-time to fill a place on the substitutes' bench.

Make no mistake: Athletic assisted in their own downfall here. All four goals were shoddy from the home side's perspective, the first coming after only 71 seconds from a corner kick via the head of the untroubled Paul Huntington and the last after appalling lax work at the back allowed Jermaine Beckford an empty goal to hammer into.

But pre-match odds of 11-10 against a win for Grayson's men represented a steal.

George Elokobi (calf), Joseph Mills (calf), Carl Winchester (hamstring), Jacob Mellis (hamstring), Amari Morgan-Smith (hamstring), Jonathan Forte (hamstring) and Conor Wilkinson (hamstring) were all out and that is a list of absences of key men which would severely hamper any club at this level.

It was down to the only fully-fit 11 available players to Dean Holden to have the best game of their whole season to stand any chance of gaining a positive result.

Predictably, they fell short. Port Vale tomorrow will be a fairer test of the caretaker boss's capabilities.

Still, the defending. Oh, the defending. You may think that after conceding in the second minute against Colchester and the third at Leyton Orient, a third successive early setback would have been strongly guarded against.

Brian Wilson had no need to hack a loose corner behind for another when in space and required a call to tell him so. A second delivery saw Huntington rise above Liam Kelly to nod in at the far post.

To their credit, Athletic didn't crumble and were at least competitive, albeit with a stark lack of quality in possession.

Chris Humphrey rattled the crossbar with a drive from North End's second real attack of the game before Johnson made it two with his third strike in successive matches.

Seven minutes into the second half, a languid Genseric Kusunga allowed Robinson to shape in a cross which shot over Kean and into the path of Joe Garner. He chested home his 15th, and easiest, goal of the season from four yards.

The fourth goal will appal both Holden and his defender sidekick Lockwood.

Timothee Dieng allowed Robinson to retrieve a ball he wanted to run behind, Kean came and failed to collect at the feet of Ebanks-Blake and Beckford fired home left-footed.

Left to lick their wounds, Athletic have no option but to put this one down to experience and come out fighting at Vale Park.