Ian Atkins is set to crack down from today on Oxford United's overweight players.

He says there are two or three in his squad who are heavier than they should be - and they know it.

And while he has kept his concern about it under wraps until now, a third successive away defeat, 1-0 at Yeovil on Saturday, has prompted him to go public.

He told the Oxford Mail exclusively: "I'm going to crack down from Monday on the overweight players. Something has got to be done.

"One or two have put on a lot of pounds and it's showing in the performances."

United looked anything but the lean, mean, fighting machine they were in away games before Christmas when they didn't know the meaning of the word defeat.

But three losses in a row away from home, at Hull, Orient and Yeovil, have set alarm bells ringing.

The U's are hanging on to third place in Division 3 thanks to the best home record of any club in the Nationwide League, but they have become a softer touch away than they used to be.

Midfielder James Hunt, their man-of-the-match at Huish Park, said: "Before Christmas, we were so hard to beat. Even when we weren't playing well, we were still grinding results out.

"Since the New Year, we've had three bad results away and we've got to nip it in the bud.

"We didn't create that much, it was very disappointing.

"We didn't seem to get started and they could have been a couple of goals up by half-time

"After the result on Wednesday, we came here in a good frame of mind and we could have done ourselves some favours today, but we never got going."

Julian Alsop lost more than a stone after being sent to Lilleshall when he was suspended, but Paul Wanless appears to be heavier than he was at the start of the season.

Atkins said the defeat "was not an acceptable performance".

He added: "It won't happen again, and whoever wants to play next Saturday will play, but they're going to need some determination and bottle.

"We just weren't at the races. It was one of those days when no-one looked sharp.

"We got in decent areas in the first 25 minutes, but never really delivered the ball in the box.

"Maybe one or two can't handle the pressure at the top. Maybe we're not good enough and we have got there by luck.

"You can talk about football as much as you like, but you've still got to have that desire to go and win battles and win challenges, and that's where Yeovil looked sharper than us."

Atkins (pictured) said he put the lacklustre performance partly down to tiredness, but admitted his team didn't deserve anything from the game.

"Wednesday night took a hell of a lot out of us. I thought people like Wanless, Alsop, Rawle and McCarthy, who haven't played a lot of football of late, might tire a bit.

"There was a temptation to change it all around, but they'd played so well on Wednesday I thought I'd give them the opportunity to play again today.

"I did ask, as a late shout, for us to have this as an overnight stop, but I wasn't allowed it because it wasn't in the budget. So maybe the preparation could have been better, but we didn't have enough sharpness out there.

"Even when I brought the subs on, all of them, it didn't make a lot of difference. We seemed to lack energy all over the park and we didn't deserve anything."