Chesterfield boss Paul Cook: I’m as frustrated as I’ve ever been with a group

Chesterfield manager Paul Cook said he was “probably as frustrated as I’ve ever been with a group of players” after a 3-0 defeat at home to Oldham saw them drop out of the play-off places.

Former Spireites Kane Drummond (2) and Mike Fondop scored the goals, with Latics putting on a strong attacking display.

Chesterfield rarely threatened throughout the 90 minutes, and Cook said: “We had no effect at the top end. Our shape looked awful. We had no outlet.

“You could write a list of everything we’d done wrong. The night started badly and never really improved.

“Oldham were excellent, very aggressive. We were a million miles off it. To go from Saturday to that probably epitomises our season. It’s probably as frustrated as I’ve ever been with a group of players, I’ve got to be honest with you.

“So we haven’t spoken to them after the game, we’ll be in first thing in the morning, we’ll collect our thoughts and then we can speak about it.

“When you get a team turn up like Oldham did, bang at it, absolutely bang at it, we had no answer. We gave the softest goals you’ll ever see. We didn’t really look like scoring.

“But we have to live with it now. We have to own it.”

Oldham boss Micky Mellon says his side are “in with an opportunity” to make the play-offs after going eight games unbeaten.

“We did everything that was necessary,” he said. “We knew that we would have to come here and perform both on and off the ball, show the quality that was going to be needed to come to a really good team and get a result.

“The players were fantastic from the first whistle. I genuinely thought we’d catch them because we have a wee bit of pace up top and we got that third goal which gave us the cushion.

“We have to keep going. I keep saying that to everybody. Big pat on the back for work done, but now it’s going to be about can you sustain that?

“Can you keep that level of performance going in order to keep winning games of football? To be in with a shout at getting out of this league.

“So, yeah, we can say that now. We are in with an opportunity now, but we have to keep performing. We can’t take our foot off the gas.

“We have to sustain it because the good teams do. The good teams sustain it and they go again. They don’t go overboard about winning a game. We obviously are going to enjoy it. We know how big a result it is.”