Head Coach Laurent Banide believes his Oldham Athletic side needed more quality in possession in yesterday’s game with Forest Green Rovers.
Latics fell to a 1-0 defeat at the New Lawn and Banide gave an honest assessment of the performance.
“It was a bad result and we must play better if we're going to win games.” He said.
“We had a game plan, but we needed to keep the ball better and create more opportunities.
“We lost the ball too quickly and we became tired, so we have to be more technical and have more quality.
“If we have more quality then we'll have better occasions to score goals, but after their goal it was difficult.
“We had a couple of chances to score but we didn't, we're upset, but we must work for the next game.”
Pre-season provided Latics with a bit of a wake-up call with the performances produced, but yesterday was a much more solid display defensively.
Banide believed it was an improved showing, but he still admits that there are improvements to be made.
“It was better, but it wasn't perfect, and we need to work more on pushing the team.” He commented.
“A lot of players were not here last year, some came yesterday, so we need to work with everyone and continue.
“It's important to get points and start our season off well, so we must improve.”
Urko Vera had a huge chance to level the score in the last five minutes, but his left footed shot just trickled wide of the post.
The Latics Head Coach believes it may be a confidence issue affecting the striker.
“It's why he goes onto the pitch he has a chance, but I don't think he was ready.
“It's football, it's like that he must continue to work and maybe he needs more confidence.
“There's a lot of things to do as a team and step by step we must produce more for the supporters and our team.”
Latics have signed 16 players in this transfer window and Banide believes that sort of influx will take time to gel.
Although with the games coming quickly, he understands that the team don’t have much time to get it right.
“We try to do what we can, there's a lot of games and we don't have too much time to prepare.
“We'll work tactically, we'll look at the video and work with the coaches on how to improve.
“Today it was better, but not 100%, we have a good opportunity to improve and we need time, but we don't have too much of it.”
Next up for Latics is the EFL Trophy game with Liverpool U21’s on Wednesday night and Banide will wait until Monday to decide what the plan will be.
“We'll see how it goes, we will prepare for the next game with the players and see what our tactic is for Liverpool.”