Jake Wright admitted Oxford United were simply not good enough to take anything from their game with Morecambe on Saturday.

Scott Rendell was on target for the home side in a frantic opening four minutes which saw goals at both ends.

But Morecambe went on to claim a 2-1 victory with Stewart Drummond’s second-half winner as United failed to find any sort of rhythm.

Wright, who had led the back four to clean sheets in their previous three games, was irritated with the goals they had conceded, and he agreed with manager Chris Wilder’s assessment that few U’s players emerged with any credit.

He said: “I think all of the outfield players were poor.

“We started slowly and once they scored obviously we got back into it, but we never really got on the front foot.

“We were poor with the ball, we also weren’t the best defensively and our defending has been our real strength this year.

“They’ve scored two goals from set pieces, which is disappointing from my point of view, but I think they didn’t have many chances.

“I just think we weren’t good enough, I don’t think we deserved anything out of the game and it was a fair result.”

The defeat was only the side’s third in a run of 21 games, which began with a goalless draw at Morecambe in December.

Wright was at a loss to explain the reasons behind the surprisingly lifeless performance, particularly coming on the back of an excellent 2-0 win at Accrington Stanley last Tuesday.

He said: “There wasn’t much difference from Tuesday’s team, was there? We were brilliant then, but we were poor (on Saturday), I can’t put my finger on it.

“We haven’t done anything differently during the week, we’ve trained as we normally do, it’s just one of those things.”