"I’ve not seen us as poor": Doncaster Rovers boss Grant McCann left fuming as League One reality sets in

"We lacked any sort of poise, purpose, swagger at the top end of the pitch," he fumed. "Deservedly beaten."

Midweek Football League games have a habit of defying logic but it was less the result, more how Doncaster played.

They kicked off on the back of three consecutive wins including a 5-1 victory at their same home ground seven days earlier. Stockport County were winless in six. The result? A 2-0 away win for the Hatters, of course.

It was no smash and grab, either. Doncaster did not muster a shot on target.

If the first half was a scrap with occasional outbreaks of football, the second was just flat from Rovers.

Shortly after hitting the crossbar direct from a corner, former Sheffield United player Ben Osborn beat Thimothee Lo-Tutala with a wonderful strike from distance. Ex-Halifax Town forward Kyle Wootton held off Connor O'Riordan to head the second.

"It surprised me," admitted McCann. "But I've been in the game a long time now and I had a feeling in the changing room before the game - and I said this to the players - that it was quite quiet.

"It felt a bit flat and the performance was flat. That's something I need to delve a wee bit deeper into, but ultimately if you can't pass the football to A to B, then you're going to be suspect to balls into Wootton and runs from (Jack) Diamond and (Malik) Mothersille.

"I can accept losing games but I can't accept when we don't lay a glove on their goalkeeper. That's ridiculous really. We're at home, we're under the lights. We're nowhere near. I've not seen us as poor as that on the ball.

"We didn't want the ball. When we did get it, we just gave it away.

"The first goal, we just don't clear it properly. We slice our clearance, hits James Maxwell (it was more of a miscontrol than a ricochet), it drops to their player (Osborn). The second one, we just give them the ball, let the lad (Diamond) cut inside and we don't grip Wootton in the box."

Doncaster were in League Two last season and of their starting XI, only O'Riordan and Jordan Gibson are new faces. McCann felt they lacked League One nous.

"We're one of the best in the league for creating chances but we're one of the worst attacks," he fumed. "We have scored one of the fewest goals in the division (only Burton Albion and Port Vale have fewer than their 17 in 19 games) so something's not right, is it?

"There's a lack of conviction.

"We don't see the importance of some stuff. When we get a corner make sure you don't hit the first man. We hit him two or three times. We get two free kicks on the edge of the box, there's no conviction. We slide them, it goes past the post, Gibbo (Gibson) has one straight into the keeper's arms. They (Stockport) have three or four corners at the end, every single one's inside our six-yard box.

"Their goals, the right decision from a player who's played in the Championship most of his career and their second goal is a position the centre-forward picks up in the box, he's been in League One for the last couple of years."

The jump in class was something substitute Ben Close spotted.

"Performances have been good lately," he commented. "We've had some good results to go along with those performances.

"There's some excellent players in League Two and there's probably a few more in League One so when you make mistakes, you get punished.

"You have to be concentrating for 100 per cent of the game, otherwise you get punished. It was a very tight game up until a moment of brilliance for the goal and then again, second goal, we've switched off for a second."

McCann blamed himself too.

"I probably should have been a bit more stern with the players at half-time because I didn't like what I saw in the first half," he reflected.

"Maybe I should have freshened it up a little bit after the late kick-off on Saturday night but we'd just won three out of three.

"Ultimately, I need these players to start believing they can beat the Stockports."

Next up are league leaders Cardiff City, away on Saturday.

"You've just got to put the trust and belief into the players," said McCann. "The amount of times we get into the top end of the pitch and we try to pass and we hit their player, or we try to control it and it goes out of play…

"It's just repetition, repetition, repetition, making the players believe in themselves. We believe in the players."

They can look for new players in the January transfer window, but belief cannot be bought - even, it seems, by three wins in a week.