NO FIGHT, no spirit and no direction – Saturday’s defeat to Salford showed exactly what is wrong with Latics at the minute.

Very rarely do I leave games early, and I’ve never done so for a big local match, but I had no qualms with walking out of Moor Lane 10 minutes before the whistle.

Feeling despondent with the way in which the players had performed, the prospect of hopping on an earlier bus was far more attractive than watching the rest of the match.

Sometimes a loss can be put down to tactical issues or bad luck, but the players were far from the mark at the weekend. Their pressing seemed lethargic, their effort was lacking, and the usual new-manager bounce was nowhere to be seen.

"It was difficult,” said Selim Benachour after the game. “Well done to the players, they gave everything. They tried to give everything… what I see today I see a lot of players involved in the project, a lot of players want to turn this negativity and bad results around."

The new boss’s comments could not have been further from the truth. If that was a performance from a team which gave everything, then I can’t even begin to think of what a performance where they had not would look like.

At no point in the game did Latics even look like scoring, and that is a worrying prospect when the opposition is not a strong one. Salford didn’t impress, but their men dug deep and looked like they were willing to work hard to secure the three points – I haven’t seen effort like that from any of our players this season.

It is not just the players’ individual performances which are to blame, however, the playing squad is simply not good enough for League Two football. As was the reason for Keith Curle’s sacking, football is a results game, so why is the man responsible for these squads – Mohamed Lemsagam – still in his position?

Of course, he is the owner's brother, but if the owner had any sense about him then he would have made the correct business decision and replaced the sporting director.

He has put personal allegiances above the needs of the club he owns and if things don’t change quickly then that season will come back to haunt him.

Lemsagam is still pumping money into a failing business, sitting in an echo-chamber rather than making the shrewd decisions which need to be done.

A National League football club is worth a shadow of that of the Football League – and if the club’s current ownership don’t address the issues at heart than they will keep condemning it to perpetual failure.