If there is one predictable element about Oldham Athletic this season, it's their unpredictability.

Just when you thought they had turned a corner with a performance that oozed guts and guile and meant Chesterfield's championship celebration party was delayed by a week after a 2-2 draw at Boundary Park, they turn in a performance that lacked all of those qualities. Not to mention lacking goals - against a team that had previously kept one clean sheet at home all season, no less.

Trust Latics to draw a blank. And trust it to happen the weekend after manager Micky Mellon had eulogised about his strikeforce.

"Four cracking strikers, four beauties" he said of messrs Norwood, Dallas, Fondop and Garner, three of which played against Chesterfield, with Norwood getting one of the goals and Dallas claiming two assists.

All four of them featured at Victoria Road, but while the Spireites had found themselves under plenty of pressure it was a different story at Dagenham.

There had been a front foot approach against Paul Cook's men, but in this pocket of the capital the foot was off the gas and the football was often high in the air.

Latics have shown - against the best in the division - that they are capable of getting the ball down and playing, and doing it well. So why should it be any different to a team plodding along in mid-table, especially when their away record up until the trip to Aldershot had been so favourable?

Is it the direction they are being steered in? The one that the management team best fits the cause game per game?

Granted, illness and injury had a hand in last Saturday's selection with a nasty flu bug hitting the camp, and a few hours there and back on a coach has probably not helped in their quest to contain it. Mellon had opted for a traditional 4-4-2 formation against Chesterfield but with enforced personnel tweaks reverted to the 3-5-2 line-up that has very much had mixed results.

Dan Gardner and Mark Kitching tried to work the overlap without success and overall Latics struggled to break through an energetic Dagenham's press.

Latics were equally resolute and a cagey first half came to a close at 0-0.

Mellon's men started the second half brightly but could not make early chances for Kitching and Liam Hogan.

Hallam Hope made his first league appearance of the calendar year just after the hour, as one half of a double substitution with Joe Garner also entering the fray.

Fondop's introduction in the 70th minute meant all four strikers had been used, with three of them on the pitch at that point. But Latics could fashion no more than a point in the end, with Fondop somehow having a close range chance kept out in the last minute of stoppage time.

Mellon had said his team would "fight and scrap and scratch and claw and give everything that we can to try to get Oldham into the play-offs". But it was a draw with Daggers, rather than daggers drawn. And with midweek wins for Gateshead and Altrincham, Oldham have dropped even further off the play-off pace.