Jimmy Quinn was clearly angry when he emerged from the dressing room some time after the final whistle, having seen his play-off chasing side humbled 2-1 by already-relegated bottom club Stafford Rangers.

Ben Farrell repeated last Saturday's feat of scoring inside the first ten minutes to give the U's an early lead, but this time they were pegged back within three minutes by a goal from veteran striker Neil Grayson and Nathan Smith won the game for his side in the 64th minute.

Admitting that he was angry, Quinn told the media, "It's because I haven't got answers, other than we had a lot of players who didn't perform well today. All I can do is apologise to the fans for that because I don't know what happened from Tuesday, when we showed grit, determination, work ethic.

"I just think it was a case of thinking when we scored 'oh we've arrived now', but football's not like that and it has a habit of kicking you in the teeth. I'm really disappointed with that today and I will do something about that because I don't think we competed well enough, especially considering Stafford are part-time and they're coming off the back of seven defeats.

"The only player I can give any sort of credit to today was Michael Morrison; I thought he defended well and won his headers and did OK, but I didn't think anybody else performed to the levels that we have in the last couple of games.

"On that performance, I think it's going down to the wire. We didn't look like a team in the top five, that's for sure."

Appetite

Quinn recalled the fit-again Dan Gleeson in place of Danny Brown, who injured his shoulder in Tuesday's win at Rushden & Diamonds, and changed to the formation back to 3-5-2 from 4-4-2, but didn't feel that those changes had a bearing on the result.

"I left Browny out because he's injured and made one change to bring Dan in, but that didn't stop people from running about and showing the appetite to win a game of football," he stressed.

"But we'll put this one behind us. We've just had a chat about it and the players don't have any reasons why. I've asked them about it because I need feedback from them as a manager about why it is, but they were as sharp as a tack yesterday in training, they were enjoying it, we got organised for set plays and stuff, but the two goals we conceded were laughable.

"When you're not free-flowing and scoring loads of goals in games, you've got to be even more resilient when you get an advantage like we did today but I don't think we did that. Football is a great game when you think everything is going well, then all of a sudden something like this happens and it's about going out on the training field and working hard and getting the lads back at it."

Quinn was particularly critical of his senior players for the goals conceded, saying, "Conceding a goal so soon after scoring tells you there's a lack of concentration and it's not just the back line, it's the midfield. The lad Draper ran off our midfield and they were like statues, as they were for most of the game I have to say.

"We didn't compete well enough for second balls in midfield and any manager will tell you you're looking for people to do their job and we didn't do that."

There were almost 3,800 home supporters in the ground and Quinn added, "I can only apologise to the fans for that performance.

Disgusting

"That's not us, we're better than that, but we conceded a goal straight after scoring the second one on Tuesday night and we've done that a few times this season, which tells me the older players in the team need to take more responsibility and boss the other players about and get them working a bit harder, because we didn't match Stafford's workrate and that's the biggest disappointment for me.

"It's disgusting and I haven't got any answers to that so it's up to the lads to show their character and bounce back now - that's the key to it."

Results elsewhere minimised the effect of the defeat as, although Exeter beat Northwich, Burton lost at Aldershot and Stevenage lost at home to Torquay, but the U's manager was reluctant to take cheer from the failure of other teams to take advantage.

"That's great but we can't keep depending on people to get results if we're going to perform like that," he fumed. "We're not going anywhere and we're not going to do anything if we perform to that level, so we'll get on the training field this week and we'll work hard and we'll get back at it."

Describing today's defeat as " the most disappointing performance of the season by far", Quinn concluded with a question for his players: "Have we got the character to bounce back? Let's hope we have."

The U's are next in action at Salisbury City on Saturday (3pm).

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