“Again we showed plenty of spirit, we’ve got a terrific bunch of lads and for small parts of the game you could not tell which team was which,” he said.

“We gave our all, but it was disappointing to concede the two early goals, in fact all three goals we conceded were poor from our point of view.

“When you don’t defend well against quality teams like Anderlecht you are going to be punished but I thought we came back well from being 2-0 down so early on.

“We can be proud of our performance, particularly in the second half, and showed that we are a good team.

“We kept the ball a lot better, but we need to look at the goals we conceded and put it right for the return leg and cut out the individual mistakes.

Confidence

“We can go there with confidence. Of course they are favourites, but this is a great team to be involved with and we believe we can score goals out there. We’ll see what happens next week.”

The efforts of the home side were given a well-deserved standing ovation at the final whistle from the crowd of 2,486 at the Racecourse.

The Saints took a day off today, before starting their preparations for the return leg at Anderlecht’s Constant Vanden Stock Stadium next Tuesday (7.45pm).

Whatever happens next week, the Oswestry-based side are assured of further progress in Europe as the losers will progress to the Europa League qualifiers.

By JOHN BRIDGWATER