By Brian Benentt
Ashington manager Marc Ellison said he was left frustrated and disappointed after watching his outfit bow tamely out of the Emirates FA Cup following a 3-2 defeat against Thornaby on Saturday.
The Colliers led on two occasions in the preliminary round clash through Jamie Holmes and Craig Spooner but the Teessiders replied with a goal from the penalty spot by Spencer Walker and a bullet-header by Jacob Thompson before Walker scored what proved to be the winner.
Ellison said afterwards: “I’m frustrated and disappointed – that’s probably the best way to describe how I feel after this afternoon. I thought in the first half we looked really comfortable again. Then we get another horrendous refereeing decision to award them a penalty. I don’t even think anyone claimed for it – and he (the referee) must’ve been the only person in the ground who thought it was one. I said last week that we can’t control decisions like that, but that said, it’s not the reason we lost the game as we went back ahead, so it’s no excuse.”
He continued: “At half-time, the message was pretty much more of the same; relax in the final third, up the tempo a little bit, and I was confident we’d have a good second half. But the goals we gave away are so poor. A free header from a corner inside the first 30 seconds, and then, if I’m being brutally honest, we just went through the motions. Things didn’t go our way as we’d hoped, but we didn’t roll our sleeves up and put it right. I think it took us until the last five minutes of the game to actually look like we wanted to go and score a goal, get something from the game and play with any real urgency.”
He added: “I can’t quite put my finger on what it is at the moment, as the game has only just finished. Maybe it’s a lack of leaders, maybe it’s confidence, maybe it’s concentration -I’m not sure. But the difference between the first half and the second half is worlds apart.
And, to be fair, we weren’t exactly at our free-flowing best in the first half either. But we looked comfortable, we looked a threat going forward and we looked like we could cause them problems. Second half, I don’t really know what to say about it – probably the less said, the better.”
He went on: “Listen, we’re four games in, two of them being in the FA Cup, and there’s a long, long, long season ahead of us. We haven’t been at the races this past week, but there’s a really good group of lads in that dressing room who want to do well for this football club. They wouldn’t be here otherwise. So yes, we’re all very disappointed with the result today, but our main focus always has been, and always will be, our league position. We know we need to be much, much better if we’re going to be anywhere near where we want to be come the end of the season. There’s no hiding from that, but like I said we’re four games in – there’s no time for crisis. We’re up against Dunston – one of the league favourites – on Tuesday night, so there’s absolutely no pressure on us, we’ll have already been written off for that one as well so that’s something we need to use to our advantage.”