Neil Gibson’s frustrations were evident after 10-man Wealdstone’s winning run came to an abrupt end in a damaging 4-1 defeat at Tamworth.
With the game goalless at half-time, the Stones capitulated in the second half after Craig Eastmond was dismissed for a second bookable offence within a minute of the restart.
“So many things to take on board. It’s hard to come out and eloquently put across how I feel because I’m really frustrated, and I know I’ve got a number of frustrated players,” said Gibson.
“We were nowhere near what we set ourselves up for and the standards we set ourselves in the last three or four games. We were nowhere near that in the first half.
“However, we defended our box really well from the long throws and the onslaught of what Tamworth are about. There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s more than one way of playing a game of football.
"They’re very good at what they do in terms of that, they are streetwise and the way they go about it.
“At half-time we spoke about how we needed to go through the gears and a little in terms of what we could do and how we could take the game to Tamworth. Obviously, everything goes out the window in the first minute of the second half with the sending-off.”
The red card seemed to almost immediately throw the Wealdstone players off track, struggling to prevent the inevitable onslaught from the hosts man less.
“Fair play to Tamworth. They were excellent at what they do and how they tried to go about the game and how they managed the game. The crowd get right behind them and made a lot of noise,” added Gibson.
“I think that, maybe, if the referee had his time back to look at a couple of those decisions, he would maybe reflect on them a bit differently.
“But, I’m not going to come out and criticise referees because as long as we take care of doing what we do and be the best version of ourselves at our very best, and then something happens that the referee has an impact on the game, then you can look at that.
“At the moment, we can only look at what we’ve got to do better as a group and how we can bounce back.”
And the Stones boss sent a message to the disappointed travelling support ahead of a crucial National League clash with Rochdale this weekend.
“We went over at the end to apologise to the supporters and I think we really need to apologise to the supporters on the basis of today. We want to give the fans something to get behind," he said.
“We want to give the fans something they can really feel positive about. The last three games prior to this, we felt we were going in the right direction.
“We’ve got to really dust ourselves down after this. We can’t carry any hangovers into Saturday.”
