Looking back not an option

Dean Furman: Players must forget cup blues and focus on the league.

AFTER a setback as painful as the final-hurdle stumble which deprived Athletic of a Wembley final, these are testing times for those charged with shaping a rapid on-field response.

As the unsuccessful attempt count went up and the clock ticked down, Boundary Park had its enthusiasm stripped away as it became clear Chesterfield would instead be beating a Wembley path in late March.

When the final whistle confirmed Athletic's cruel exit from the Johnstone's Paint Trophy, manager Paul Dickov and his team really started to earn their corn.

There wasn't much wrong with the game-plan.

The Spireites, stout defensively and posing danger when quickly sliding into attacking mode, were pummelled for much of the second leg and had goalkeeper Tommy Lee to pat on the back for their clean sheet.

Athletic simply couldn't muster the composure sufficient to put away their opportunities.

Once the final whistle had confirmed the worst, boosting the players' morale was the immediate priority for Dickov — who was himself quite probably the most disappointed man in Oldham.

The anguished expressions on those men trickling out of Athletic's changing room, long after the visitors' dwelling had been swept clean, laid to rest the notion that professionals don't really have a feel for the heightened emotions the sport can elicit.

Heads bowed, walking slowly through the bowels of the main stand towards the players' lounge, the body language indicated that already a thousand re-runs of missed opportunities had been recreated in their minds.

What wasn't so obvious was that Dickov's thoughts had already switched towards the future.

"It can go two ways after a defeat like that," said injured captain Dean Furman, a man determined that Athletic take a firm grip of their own destiny in the final three months of the season.

"The boys can go into their shells. Or, they can stand up, be men and take to the challenge of moving up the league.

“We had a little chat after the game and that is exactly what we plan to do.

"The gaffer doesn't want anyone moping about. He won't have that.

"It hurts. But we have to get over it. It is a very important game on Saturday and we want to quickly get back-to-back victories."

Furman refers to the one nobody was talking about pre-Chesterfield — a home league clash with Leyton Orient at Boundary Park in two days' time.

The need to quickly refocus on the remainder of the npower League One season is obvious.

Currently seven points clear of the relegation zone, wins have to be put on the board soon if glances towards the nether section of the table aren't to switch to lingering looks.

The position the club finds itself in certainly brings no pleasure to Furman.

He added: "We are disappointed with our league placing, given the players we have inside the dressing room.

"We need to set our sights higher than the bottom half of the table and that starts this Saturday.

"Sometimes cup runs, which have been great for us this year, can detract from league form when you are putting so much into the knock-out ties.

"That is gone now. We have an important 20 games where we have to be spot-on.

"We want to improve game on game, season on season as a team.

"Everyone is disappointed — players, staff, fans. But we need to stick together as a club."

Ensuring the major element which went wrong against Chesterfield is rectified — the lack of a clinical touch in scoring areas — is a process that starts on the training field, Furman believes.

Since Shefki Kuqi's drought began, Athletic have hit the net only eight times in 11 fixtures and goals have been especially hard to come by lately.

And only one has arrived in the last four games, despite the fact that in two of those fixtures — against Chesterfield — Athletic rained down 47 shots.

"We are getting opportunities," Furman said. "There is a problem if you are not doing that.

"Without singling anyone out, we need to look at ourselves as a group.

“It starts in training — we need to work on our finishing and be moreprecise. We have to be more clinical when chances arrive, as they have done in the last few games."