No excuse for collective flop

The Latics forward writes every week for Chron Sport

OUR performance at Portsmouth was very good under pressure.

The clean sheet and the goal that won the game were deserved — so it made it all the more disappointing that we let our standards slip against Chesterfield.

Carl Winchester made the mistake for their equalising goal and it is possible a few players said to themselves "not again".

But we have to learn to cope with it.

Either we must not make the errors in the first place, or when they happen, we have to shrug them off and get a goal ourselves.

We started sluggishly in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy tie.

In the middle of the first half we managed to get a grip on the game without ever playing the sort of slick football we are capable of.

Matt Smith scored after causing Chesterfield’s defence plenty of difficulties.

But just before half-time we started to sit off them, and that let them cause us a few problems.

Back on the pitch we couldn't find a way to a Plan B. We kept on going long, time after time, and it allowed Chesterfield to get a foothold in the game.

It was Matt's first 90-minute run since April. He deserved to start the game; nobody was hurt more when he scored the own goal that put Chesterfield through.

Carl was also very upset and went around the changing room afterwards apologising to everyone.

But it wasn’t down to them that we lost. It was down to us not performing with the same collective desire we showed at Portsmouth.

The manager made his feelings known to us on Tuesday and rightly so. He can create all the tactical plans, but if we players don't implement them, there is not a lot he can do about it



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