Boss Ian Evatt admitted Wanderers’ performance at Stockport County was unacceptable as a 5-0 defeat undermined their recent surge up the League One table, writes Pete Oliver.
A heaviest loss of the season saw Evatt’s men fall out the top six after they failed to build on a run of six wins in eight league games with an abject showing at Edgeley Park.
Four second-half goals saw County bounce back from their own 5-0 drubbing in mid-week to league leaders Wycombe as Wanderers’ short-comings were severely punished in their final league game ahead of another international break.
“That's not acceptable. That's as poor as it gets from start to finish. We've let everybody down again,” Evatt said. “We've worked so hard to build some momentum into the season, put in some good performances of late and today we've just undone it all in 90 minutes really.
“We didn't compete, we didn't win enough battles, win enough duels which are the basics of football especially in a local derby. We didn't do that well enough, we didn't defend set-plays well enough and we got hurt and it has to hurt it hurts us all. We apologise for that and we will try and rectify it as best we can.”
Wanderers’ preparations were badly disrupted by illness which affected a number of players and kept them out of training during the week.
But Evatt didn’t offer that as a reason for a performance that sent the 800-plus Wanderers’ fans home unhappy with the manner of a fifth defeat of the season.
“We haven't trained (properly) all week,” the manager told Wanderers TV. “We've tried to keep it in-house but we’ve had everyone off ill. We’ve had sickness and diarrhoea just wipe the camp out. We've had flu and we've had it all this week.
“We're light on bodies as it is. The players on the bench are only limited to certain minutes because we can't break them. This week has been as tough as it could possibly be but that's no excuse. We've got to be better than that.
“Ultimately, I will always try to take responsibility and today we've drastically under-performed. These types of defeat really hurt. Self-reflection is a key part of football that doesn't happen honestly enough, in my opinion, but we’ll do the best we can to be honest and transparent and look at ourselves and see where we go from here.
“We've let them (the supporters) down, there's no two ways about that. We've had a lot of good times together over this four, five-year spell. This season, in particular, the start of it has been very rough but we will do all we can to try and fix it.”
Watch the manager’s full post-match interview on Wanderers TV and the assessment of captain George Johnston HERE