Ronnie Moore has dubbed the Latics performance at Scunthorpe as "as poor as we have been all season." Moore was scathing and said, " It was schoolboy stuff and that is being unfair on schoolboys. One thing is for sure, we can't keep conceding goals like that and expect to win promotion. The strikers did well and the midfield worked hard, but the defending was totally unacceptable. It was more like Fred Karnos and defending is supposed to be the easy part of football. We work hard on it in training with the back four but you would never had thought it watching this game.""We had started nice and bright and got ourselves back in the game after conceding two sloppy goals. I told the players at half-time that we just needed to keep it tight at the back because we would create chances. Then we have a mad 10 minutes and it killed us because before we knew it we were 4-2 down."
After the game Moore locked his players in the dressing room for 40 minutes and confessed that Athletic could forget about promotion if they didn’t improve at the back. He went on, “I’m sick of saying it, but our defending as individuals and a unit was unacceptable yet again. You can’t expect to go up when you concede so many goals. We haven’t played a good team all season and I think this is a poor league, but we are halfway down it because we’ve let in 27 goals. That’s soul-destroying for everybody, the players, the management and the supporters. It’s individual errors which are hurting us most, and what really frustrates me is that Scunthorpe were there for the beating. We were level at half-time and I told the lads we needed to withstand 15 minutes of pressure and then go on to win. Those were my parting words and Luke Beckett had a great chance to make it 3-2, but Scunthorpe went straight down the other end and scored. I’d said we had to be strong and organised before getting back on top of the game, but we had a mad few minutes which took it away from us. All four goals should have been avoided, and the mistakes of the individual are affecting the team as a whole."
“We work hard on the back four in training all week, but you wouldn’t think so would you? Their first goal came when we didn’t react to a quick free-kick, then Marc Tierney got caught at the back post again for the second. Guy Branston’s back-header led to the third, which should have been cleared from the corner anyway, and the last was just Fred Karno’s, with Guy Branston and Danny Hall getting in each other’s way. Our front two had been causing big problems early on, but I feel for the supporters because we’re such an up-and-down team at the moment. We had a warning against Bristol City when we made hard work of winning 4-3, but apparently nothing was learned from that experience. The strikers did well and the midfield tried hard, but it’s very difficult to win games when a massive part of your team doesn’t perform. We know we can defend well because it has happened in other games this season, but we looked vulnerable to every free-kick and set-play.”
Moore was obviously disappointed with his teams defeat at Scunthorpe and declared that they would have to forfeit days off, train hard and get back to the drawing board before the trip to part-timers Chasetown in the FA Cup on Sunday. Moore said, "We would not have frightened them, that's for sure."