Livingston boss David Martindale says his side need to get back to basics if they are to finish their season on a high.
A 3-1 loss to Motherwell on Saturday made it six games without a win but the Lions are still in the hunt for a European place if they can turn their form around.
The gaffer also refused to point fitness as an issue for their lacklustre display at Fir Park despite it being their third game of the week.
Devante Cole netted either side of the break - the first being a penalty - before Jack Fitzwater pulled the Lions back into the contest. The points were in the bag for the Well, though, when a blocked Robby McCrorie clearance led to Chris Long slotting home their third.
A dejected Martindale said: "I look at it on a game-by-game basis and the last five haven’t been good enough.
“This is the same group who went 14 games unbeaten with 10 clean sheets and it looks like we would struggle to keep a clean sheet right now. The boys have to find that inner confidence and quickly. We need to defend our box better and do the basics better.
“If we are going to defend like that in the Premiership we will never win games of football. People talk about three games in seven days but that’s disrespectful to Motherwell.
“I think I made enough changes to make sure we had enough energy in the midfield areas to get us up the park."
He added: "You look at the score but I don’t think Robby McCrorie had a lot to do and that’s disappointing when we lost three goals.
“Motherwell never had a lot of shots on our goal, we weren’t much better to be fair.
“Liam Kelly had a fantastic save and Josh Mullin hit the bar. Matej Poplatnik had a chance in the second half but we didn’t do enough.”
