A FUMING Gary Waddock slammed Oxford United’s “losing culture” as their faint play-off hopes evaporated amid a tame surrender to Accrington Stanley.

Although results elsewhere meant even a victory would not have been enough, the 2-1 defeat only deepened the gloom around the club.

It was a tenth defeat in 14 outings for a side which had been in the Sky Bet League Two automatic promotion places in the final week of February.

Waddock has lost six of his seven games in charge and the head coach admitted the 2-0 win at Plymouth this month was the exception in an otherwise miserable run.

He said: “For our supporters, for the chairman and everyone associated with this fantastic football club, that performance is nowhere near what I’m looking for.

“If I’m going to be brutally honest, since I’ve been here Plymouth away was a very good performance and apart from that the performances haven’t been acceptable.

“It will be addressed, make no mistake, because that is not the type of team we want playing for this club.

“At the moment we have a losing culture. We need to change that and it will be changed.”

Accrington, who needed a positive result to rubber-stamp their Football League status, took the lead in controversial fashion, when Michael Raynes appeared to be fouled in the build-up.

But for Waddock it was the ease with which James Gray scored the visitors’ second goal which summed up all United’s problems.

“The lad went through two or three challenges, that’s got nothing to do with confidence – it’s just about desire and you can’t coach that,” he said.

“I wanted to give our supporters something to go into the close season with. They have certainly gone into it with something – but it’s not a Gary Waddock team.

“That’s not the type of team I will build here, it will be completely the opposite. It will be a team that will play with hunger, desire and enthusiasm.

“They will run and work for one another, that didn’t happen on Saturday and it’s only possibly happened once since I’ve been here.”

Defeat means the final league game, the trip to Chris Wilder’s Northampton Town will be a dead rubber for United, something which was unthinkable only a few weeks ago.

“I said to the players they had a wonderful opportunity with the start they had to go into the play-offs or gain promotion,” Waddock said.

“For whatever reason it’s dwindled away.”