Oldham have seen the impressive run of form built up under John Sheridan unravel in recent weeks, seven matches unbeaten preceding three successive losses, sending them back into the relegation zone.
Tuesday’s 2-1 loss away against Walsall was the latest defeat, made all the more painful by the fact they led through Will Sutton’s first half goal.
The more positive news is Latics still have two games in hand on 22nd place Stevenage, who lead them by three points.
Exeter’s main goal threats come from Matty Jay and Timothee Dieng, whose 12 and 10 goals respectively sandwich them around Latics recent player of the month recipient Davis Keillor-Dunn on 11.
And the Grecians have been in solid form of late, only losing one league match since New Year's Day.
Speaking after the Walsall match, Sheridan noted the troubling theme of Oldham squandering leads in the past few weeks.
He said: “That's another game where we're winning and I feel as though we're going to win the game, and we just concede goals..
“If we do things better on the pitch we can make life comfortable and we should have more points. Colchester we were winning, Crawley we were winning.
“We're in a dogfight, we know that, we knew it was going to be like this, but we're making life very difficult for ourselves.”
