Sam Ricketts: Shrewsbury Town were out-worked and out-fought
Frustrated Shrewsbury boss Sam Ricketts felt his side were out-worked and out-fought in a disappointing 2-1 Boxing Day reverse at Accrington Stanley.
A shocking start saw Salop fall behind after 25 seconds as former winger Jordan Clark curled home and the hosts doubled their lead on 21 minutes.
Ricketts, whose side have the worst away record in League One, blamed a very poor performance on a failure to deal with the basics in Lancashire.
The boss demanded a reaction at half-time and his side responded but Ollie Norburn's penalty after the break was as good as it got for the visitors, who drop to 18th in the division ahead of a trip to Sunderland on Saturday.
"As pleased as I was with the performance against Coventry would be the complete opposite," said the boss.
"I thought we were very poor in an awful lot of departments and the basics I demand from my team, summed up from conceding after 30 seconds.
"I spoke many times that we need to keeps clean sheets or concede zeros and ones to give you a chance.
"You can't come away from home now, twice and be behind in three minutes in both games.
"I wouldn't mind if they were amazing goals, they're not. It's really poor from our point of view."
Ricketts felt Town should have had another penalty late on as sub Alex Gilliead was fouled in the box, but remained displeased with what his side offered out to 770 travelling Salop fans.
He continued: "I can't fault the players' efforts. We're never going to get where we want to be in two or three weeks it's going to take a long time.
"Today's a real hard one to take with how well we played against Coventry, I saw a different side today.
"Accrington work really hard, but with all due respect it's not an amazing way they play football, they just out-worked us and out-fought us.
"We seem to have to work so hard when we score and are giving soft goals away.
"Josh Laurent has a free header just before half-time right in the middle of the goal, if you go in 2-1 it's a different game.
"On the flip side second half we stepped it up, we should've had another clear penalty, had good instances or opportunities but the last bit didn't have the clinical action to put it in the back of the net."
