Harry Kewell's Oldham Athletic recorded their eighth home league loss of the season on Saturday afternoon when they were beaten 2-1 by Harrogate Town.

READ: Oldham Athletic 1-2 Harrogate Town match report: Simon Weaver's side condemn Latics to defeat

After the game, the manager spoke to the press:

Oldham's performance

From the onset, Latics struggled during Saturday afternoon's game and didn't look like posing any real threat, something which Kewell was not pleased with.

"We definitely [were] not good enough today, from minute one," the Latics manager said. "I thought Harrogate were excellent - they passed, they moved, they created chances, they caused us problems. And they were unlucky really to go down 1-0 but they’d done well enough to get back into the game and scored the goal.

"Even then, I thought, okay, we haven’t started, it’s 1-1, we’re lucky - but we just never got going. We had an incident that put us in an awkward position and I suppose it was just really one team winning there. I suppose you maybe look to get something on the counter but they were good, they were winning every first ball, every second ball, they were bullying our centre-backs, they were holding the ball up, they were running channels.

"They were doing everything that we do usually so it’s a shame so it’s an opportunity again [that] we’ve missed. That’s not the team I’ve seen recently - in training and in games - so hopefully it was just a one-off."

A slow start

Oldham failed to get out of the blocks early on and Harrogate quickly rose to an xG of over 0.75 within the first few minutes of the game.

"If I could, it wouldn’t be happening," Kewell said when asked why his side performed as they did from the start. "I don’t see, again, there’s a difference - we play on a fantastic pitch. Okay, the conditions were a little bit breezy but that not like any others, I mean this pitch is probably one of the best ones around so there’s no excuses. We just [were] not good enough today."

Forward Bobby Grant saw himself sent off in the 43rd minute after a trailing arm hit Jack Lawlor in the head and Latics went down to ten men.

"It is frustrating," Kewell said. "But again, we didn’t start from moment one so I can’t sit there and have a go at someone else when my team wasn’t good enough."

With a quick turnaround before Tuesday's visit to Grimsby, where they will be looking to pick up a record nine victories in a row, Oldham will need to improve on Saturday's performance: "We go back to the drawing board now," finished the Latics manager. "We work on it and we go back to a better style of playing because again, I’m still a little bit dazed of what I’ve just witnessed.

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