James Coppinger felt Rovers were well off the mark after being beaten 2-1 at Bristol Rovers in Sky Bet League One.
Coppinger had given Rovers a first-half lead, before a Luke McCormick double turned the game on its head.
He said: “We weren’t good enough individually or collectively, having got the first goal we stopped doing what we were doing up to that point.
“With 10 games to go before this game we were still in a position where we could achieve something so a performance like that is tough to take.
“You know what to expect from a Joey Barton team, Fleetwood were exactly the same, but we couldn’t match their efforts.”
After suffering back-to-back defeats over the Easter weekend, Coppinger says the players need to take responsibility for the recent run of form.
He added: “We need to take ownership and responsibility of what we’re doing on the pitch, it’s all down to how motivated you are to get to the next level.
“It’s tough because we haven’t had a lot of training time and the group want each other to do well but when we go on the pitch it doesn’t look like that.
“We were lacking that cohesion and we didn’t match their work rate and effort, which is just not good enough.”