By Brian Bennett | Photo: Ian Brodie
Ashington manager Nick Gray cut a forlorn figure on Saturday night after his side had been comprehensively defeated 4-0 by Bradford Park Avenue at Woodhorn Lane.
On a day to forget, the boss looked on as the promotion chasers cruised into a three goals lead just after the half hour mark before they added a fourth within a minute of the start of the second half.
Gray said: “It was a tough day at the office and I’m not only gutted for the supporters but for everyone at the club. We hadn’t had a game for three weeks but I’m not making that as an excuse because you should be chomping at the bit to go out on the park today and within ten minutes we are 2-0 down. Credit to Bradford Park Avenue who were far better than us in every department. They played a 4-4-2 system and people say these days that you cannot play that formation – but they made it work today and we couldn’t cope with it.”
He continued: “The first half was probably one of the worst I’ve seen to be honest. We didn’t talk to each other or look to get on the ball and when we did, we gave poor passes or made poor decisions. They (Bradford) are a decent side but with no disrespect they are not Real Madrid and I just thought we made it easy for them. If you are playing against good sides you’ve got to make it difficult; you’ve got to work harder than them; you’ve got to make sure that you’re passing is on the button and you certainly can’t give them easy goals.”
He added: “At half time I brought Marc Ellison off. I thought he was one of our better performers if I’m being honest but he was on a yellow card and I know how much the game means to him and I didn’t want him to become frustrated. We asked the players for a reaction but within a minute we were another goal down and we couldn’t have asked for a worse start to the second half. All of us have got to look at ourselves in the mirror and be better and how do we do that? Well we have got to learn from it but I feel as if I am on a repeat record sometimes because we go two steps forward and one step back.”
He went on: “One thing I will say about this league is if you are not prepared to work hard and stop giving teams goals, it’s going to be difficult to win games of football. Today I didn’t think we gave ourselves a chance (to win a game of football) and that’s really disappointing. Although I don’t like getting beat, I can accept it but it’s the mannerism of how you get beat – and we were second best in every department. We have played at home today and I think we have had one, maybes two crosses into the box and we haven’t had one shot at goal the whole of the game – so how can you win games of football? Second half you could see how they (Bradford) didn’t want to concede a goal – they kept going and were determined and from one to 11 they were better than us. It was up to us to change the mechanism of the game as they (Bradford) didn’t need to but you can’t give sides an easy ride – and we certainly did that today.”
Ashington now start a run of three consecutive away games when they travel to face Heaton Stannington on Tuesday (January 20) with Gray looking for a reaction from his players: “The hardest thing for me to take is that I’m not on the pitch – and I wish I could be,” he said, “You can do as much or as little training or as much talking as you want but if you haven’t got it when you go out onto the pitch its always going to be difficult. We had very few set pieces today but even when we got one, people were doing the wrong things and that was also disappointing. That’s why we got the result we did today because it was a simple case where it was too acceptable from to many players. I’ve said that we need to box on this half of the season and today was the first of six games in 17 days for us so everyone is going to get an opportunity and people have got to grasp their chance.”