JOHN Sheridan is expecting a reaction from his Oldham Athletic side at Southend tomorrow.

Latics suffered their first defeat of the season, at home to part-time outfit Wealdstone on Tuesday night, with the 2-1 loss including a 23-pass move for the visitors’ second goal.

Sheridan was frustrated by his side’s lack of pace and energy both with and without the ball.

And while he welcomed an improvement in their second-half performance, he expects even more of a response from them this weekend.

“I’d like to think so, yes,” he said.

“We’ve got to go and win at Southend now. If we do that it’s not a bad start to the season.

“But when you’re at home in this league we should be winning games at home.

“It’s a kick up the backside, but it’s happened early in the season and it might be a good thing.

“We were very flat and very stretched.

“The tempo of the game was miles better for us in the second half, the way we went about it, getting them on the back foot. But we’re chasing the game.

“The early goal gave us a lift, and then we huffed and puffed. There was a lack of quality higher up the pitch and we should have created more problems with them with the possession we had.

“The first two or three minutes was probably our best period.

“We didn’t try to disturb them. They were just setting up and we were just allowing them to do it by being negative in the way we played.”

Sheridan added: “It’s a bit of a shock result but fair play to Wealdstone, I thought they played well. They got the advantage of the two goals and stuck to the gameplan.

“We need to do a lot better and start a lot better.

“We’re too slow in the way we play.

“Once they set up and get men behind the ball, if you delay that pass and go sideways instead of forwards or go backwards instead of forwards, we were very naive.

“We didn’t try to hurt them.”

Sheridan has urged them to dig in and put things right at Roots Hall.

“When you lose a game you’ve got to bounce back by winning a game,” said the Latics boss.

“We’ve got to go and try to win every game, whoever we’re playing.

“It’s a disappointing result (against Wealdstone), I was hoping we’d get the win that we were after.

“I’ve seen the results again and they’re all funny results in this league.

“You’ve just not got to worry about anyone else and win your games, but if you don’t perform, every team in this league is going to want to come and play against us and prove a point, and Wealdstone did that.”