The Latics never fail to disappoint. The team with the second worst home form in the league continued their abysmal form with a shocking 5-2 reverse at the hands of Southend United on Tuesday night. On a night when admission was reduced to £5, just over 3,000 home supporters bothered to show up. Even season ticket holders are up in arms and vowing not to show up until the team also start to show up. Die hard fans have had enough and unless something changes, and quickly, Oldham Athletic will continue their downward spiral
Manager David Dunn blurted, “We’ve gone on about it since the Barnsley game and I didn’t see anything there in the first half again. You can go on as much as you want but it’s got to come from within sometimes and I don’t see enough people out there taking responsibility for their own performance because that’s not good enough. We can’t be 3-0 down before we roll our sleeves up and start competing. We huffed and puffed and give it a bit of a go and got it back to 3-2 but then it was same old story. The goals are so soft. I’ll try and protect them as much as I can but you can’t legislate for some of those soft goals. It was soft goals to give away against a team like Southend who are organised and you give yourself an uphill task.”
“We’ve got to quickly move on, as hard as it is to take. I’m pretty honest and that wasn’t good enough so I can understand everyone’s frustrations at times. To be honest, I thought the fans came out and kept singing along and they kept going and we gave them hope at the end, but we were nowhere near good enough. If you looked at chances created, we had 19 shots against their seven and it’s really disappointing. This is the worst I’ve felt since I’ve been in charge. We’ve got to be more resilient but we are too easy to play against. I thought Mark Yeates was a threat all night. I thought Liam Kelly was exceptional. If we had 11 players with his desire then we certainly wouldn’t be where we are.”
The Latics now need to pick themselves up and move on. As the only undefeated team on their travels, they go to Crewe Alexandra next, ironically the only team with a worse home form than Athletic. What are the odds?