There were no positives for Stevenage according to manager Alex Revell after watching side surrender to Forest Green Rovers - as he reiterated the whole squad need to "knuckle down".
The 4-0 defeat at the Lamex Stadium to the league leaders means Boro have now gone six League Two games without a win, drawing just two of them, and have plummeted to fourth from bottom.
It started badly with a goal from Kane Wilson on two minutes and then got worse in the opening 13 minutes of the second half as former loanees Matt Stevens and Jamille Matt scored.
Jake Young rubbed the salt into the wounds with nine minutes to go and Revell struggling to put his finger on what is going wrong.
He said: "There are no positives to take, it wasn’t good enough. We have to make sure that next week there is a reaction in the intensity and the togetherness.
"That alone has to happen and on top of that we need more quality.
"We do look back to last year because we played such good football and we were competitive and didn't concede too many goals.
"The hardest thing is figuring out how that’s changed. We do very similar work.
"We’ve obviously brought in players but we've conceded too many crosses and opportunities and on the flip side, we’re not getting enough ball to out forwards.
"That’s why we changed the formation, to give players a reset and to try and mix what we’re doing.
"It’s easy looking back to say should we have done it but we did it for the right reasons.
"The only way to get over it is to knuckle down and keep working on those things that will improve us.
"The team has to stick together and when they come in on Monday, they have to be ready to work to turn these results around."
He said that the remedy though will be going back to basic football, doing the simple things correctly.
That was missing from the home side's play, with Revell saying that "if you don’t win your duels and you don’t outwork people and you don’t stick to what we’re trying to achieve, then it becomes very difficult".
Further frustrations came from the fact they'd worked all week to on the new system but those preparations went out of the window with the early goal.
He said: "We’ve conceded way too many goals and we’ve lost [Terence Vancooten] so we looked at out structure and felt we needed another centre half on the pitch and to go from there.
"The players knew [what they had to do] but you concede and maybe it is nerves or pressure but we don’t express ourselves.
"We’ve got a lot or thinking to do this week and a lot of work.
"We need to help the players to think about how they are in terms of pressure and their own battles because we lost way too many duels."
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