The lights well and truly went out for Brakes in the second half at The Merseyrail Community Stadium today against Southport. Manager Paul Holleran gave his thoughts on the defeat on the journey home…

‘Obviously I’m bitterly disappointed. I thought we started the first half poorly but we grew into the game. With the conditions in our favour and a strong end to the first half I was looking for us to maybe kick on, but as a good as they were it was as poor as we’ve been, in terms of a defensive structure. It was just far too easy to get balls wide, to get round the back of us and get crosses in. It’s a really poor day for us. Telford was poor a few weeks ago but we were well in that game but today, at times in the second half, for what we have got in the team we were far too naive and we’ve got to do better. We were out of our depth in the second half, there’s no ifs or buts about it. They toyed with us…. They scored five and they could have scored more, and as much as that’s down to some good play from them, we haven’t helped ourselves.

‘We’ve got some work to do. It’s a little bit of a kick up the backside for us at the moment. This was always going to be a tough period. I’m so disappointed on the back of such a good performance last week, and to get to half time 1-0 up at half time at Southport….then for a 45 minute performance like that….we were miles away from where we need to be really. We’re going to have to look at one or two things, and we will this week. Obviously shuffling the pack with injuries and suspensions isn’t helping, and players seem to be able to do well for short periods, but not for 90 minutes or for two or three games, so it’s something we’ve got to look at, and we will do.’