Lord Sebastian Coe today insisted British athletics chief Dave Collins should have been at the Commonwealth Games.

Collins, UK athletics performance director, has criticised the preparation of England's athletes after the sprint fiasco when the 4x100m relay team failed to finish in their heat after a botch-up in the baton exchange as Mark Lewis-Francis prepared to run the final leg.

But Coe insisted Collins should have flown out to assess for himself the condition of British athletes at the Melbourne Cricket Ground rather than staying in London.

When asked if he thought that decision was strange, Coe told PA Sport: "Yes I do. I'm not attacking Dave, but if I were a director of coaching I would want to see the whites of the athletes' eyes.

"You need to see how people respond and you can't do that unless you are here.

"You need to see the condition that people are in. I think there are some questions about the condition some of these athletes come into championships. Some of the athletes out here are not fit for purpose.

"Dave has started a programme of change which he will be judged on and he's right to say it will not happen overnight."

Coe, who has a team of 11 observers in Melbourne picking the brains of the organisers in preparation for the London 2012 Olympics, agreed with the criticism of former American track legend and BBC pundit Michael Johnson who berated England's sprinters for a lack of hunger and being content with mediocrity.

"The world has become more competitive and we have allowed standards in track and field to slip quite dramatically," Coe said.

And he warned that the £200m of extra funding announced by the government this week in the run-up to the London Games would not guarantee London their target of fourth in the medals table.

"I welcome the £200m into the system," said Coe. "But I don't kid myself that on its own that is enough. You can't say 'We've got the money in place, we are going to get fourth place in the medal table.' The funding has to be targeted with pinpoint accuracy at the coaches and the athletes.

"In some sports fourth place is realistic, in some it clearly isn't. I'm glad we have an ambitious target. Better that than saying our target is to finish between 10th and 20th. But fourth place is very ambitious."

Coe, however, does not believe it is all doom and gloom for British athletics, pointing in particular to the golds picked up by decathlete Dean Macey, Kelly Sotherton in the heptathlon and 22-year-old Christine Ohuruogu in the 400m.

"I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon and say all out athletes are underperforming because they are not," he said.

"No-one would say that Macey or Sotherton or Christine Ohuruogu were underperforming. I think Ohuruogu is the find of these championships. That was a sensational piece of running, showing maturity beyond her years.

"She is the British athlete of these championships. What I find more worrying is that every championship we are all covering the same ground. The underperformance in general doesn't seem to be addressed."