Much of the frustration following the Saturday defeat was the fact that four points had been taken from two very tough games leading into the weekend visit of Leyton Orient.
“I think it probably shows the level of inconsistency we’ve got in the group, unfortunately,” manager Paul Simpson said. “That’s not me being brutal about it, that’s just me being honest, it’s just where we are as a group.
“We had a level of consistency last season that was enough to get us to the play-offs. We’ve now stepped up and we haven’t got that level of consistency yet.
“There are all sorts of things, quality when we get in the final third and being ruthless. I look at the deliveries we’ve had from set plays and we have to make them count.
“Joe Garner has had a couple of headers, we’re taking shots on from 25 yards that are flying over the bar. We could go into all sorts of things, but I think the big issue is the level of consistency.
“We have to get there and make sure we keep working to get there. If we do that we’ll get consistent results as well.”
And there was perhaps an expectation following the Bolton performance that there would be more of the same at the weekend.
“I didn’t for one minute think we’d unlocked the door and everything was going to be rosy in the garden after last week,” he told us. “I knew it was still going to be a challenging time ahead.
“They’re all tough games and we should never think we’re ready to coast along. We’re going to have to be at full-tilt every single game this season for us to achieve what we want to.
“Today, in that first 45 or 50 minutes we weren’t at full-tilt. It’s not a confidence thing - and I hate that thing because nobody can give you it, it comes from within.
“If you can’t take confidence after the Bolton game then there’s something seriously wrong. Orient was a level of inconsistency, and whether that’s a mindset of - it’s ok because we had a good result last weekend - well that isn’t acceptable.
“This was an opportunity to get three really big points on the back of three points at Bolton, which were a huge bonus. Now, we’re in a position where we’ve taken three points out of the two games, but if we’d have lost at Bolton everybody would have expected it.
“We’ve missed an opportunity to get three big bonus points today. It’s a mindset, and that’s the question I’ve asked the players in there.
“You have to ask yourself, has your mindset over this week been right. It’s not a case of me passing the buck, but I think in terms of the training, we’ve tried to prepare them as normal as we possibly could.
“We had a huge disappointment as a group last Tuesday night in everything that happened there, but that shouldn’t affect us because this was a different group predominantly, we should be going in on the back of having the confidence from what we had last weekend.
“I said to them before the game, the challenge is can we build on the late equaliser against Peterborough, can we build on the performance and win at Bolton, and sadly we haven’t done that.
“We were just off it, far too many players were off it. Players who last week were outstanding, they weren’t at that level.
“The word I’m going to use again is consistency - you have to achieve that as a footballer. And there’s just such a huge gulf between last week and this week. That’s a worry, but also a disappointment.”