PHIL Brown insists he will not be walking away from Southend United.

The Shrimpers slumped to 22nd in the League One standings after a disappointing 3-0 defeat at Rochdale on Saturday.

But Brown is keen to fight on and help Blues turn things back around.

“Results will dictate my future and the future of Southend United but I’m not going to walk away from any situation here,” said the Southend boss.

“I’m a fighter and I believe my changing room has fight in it even though we haven’t seen that here.

“It’s my job to get the bottom of why.

“If it’s personnel I’ll get rid of them but if it’s not then they will get rid of me if results like this continue away from home.

“I feel as though I’ve got a good group who I think are underachieving and I hold myself fully responsible for that.”

Saturday’s setback was the Shrimpers’ third in succession on the road in games which have seen them concede 11 goals without scoring in reply.

But Blues are unbeaten in their last five matches at Roots Hall.

And Brown remains confused by the stark contrast between his side’s home and away form.

“We came here on the back of three good performances at home and I thought those results had been a turning point for us,” said the 57-year-old.

“But to come here and lose like that is very frustrating.

“Maybe I picked the wrong team and I hold myself fully responsible for the result but the difference between us at home and us away is chalk and cheese.

“It was 4-0 at Scunthorpe, 4-0 at Northampton and 3-0 here which is minus 11 and very different to our results at Roots Hall.

“You could say set pieces were maybe the difference between the two teams today.

“But the difference in the first half was that they were prepared to put their head in the six yard box and we weren’t.”

Blues found themselves 2-0 down midway through the first half at Spotland.

And that led to Brown making his first substitution of the game after just 35 minutes as Marc-Antoine Fortune came on to replace David Mooney.

“I was disappointed that the work rate of the front three just wasn’t there,” said Brown, explaining the switch.

“Every time a ball went up to a Rochdale player it stuck and their forward battled for it.

“But every time a ball went up to my strikers we were either offside or we didn’t win it.

“You could say the back three was on the back foot because of that but I’m not blaming one player it’s a collective thing.

“David was offside four or five times and that allowed them to pump balls back into their strikers so territorially we were going to be up against it.

“If I was out there heads would have rolled but we don’t have any players out there doing that.”