How soft! – Phil Parkinson trashes Wrexham flops during a 5-0 Stockport thrashing and declares that he may never use him again.

Wrexham battered by Stockport

First real hammering since Football League return

Parkinson scathing of his side’s performance

WHAT HAPPENED? Wrexham travelled to Stockport hoping to build on last week’s 3-0 home win over Grimsby Town but everything went wrong on the day. Goals from Louie Barry, Paddy Madden and a hat-trick from Isaac Olafoe consigned Parkinson’s side to their second league defeat of the season. Despite the fact it’s been a solid start back to life in the Football League, Parkinson was heavily critical of his team after such a dismal outing.

WHAT THEY SAID: Speaking after the game, Parkinson said: “It’s as bad of a first-half that I can remember us playing in terms of all the fundamentals in football. So many times we gave the ball away in the back third and middle third and put ourselves under pressure, our selection of pass and weight of the pass, we put ourselves under so much pressure today. Coming away to Stockport, it’s about getting a platform in a game, start properly, do the right things in the right areas of the pitch and build a performance. Today we were sloppy in everything we did and we’ve got to take our medicine.

“We’ve done okay on the road so far this season but they were just a yard quicker, a yard sharper all over the pitch. We had so many performances today which were so far below par and it’s kind of difficult to explain that. I need to look at that, the reasons for that. They were sharper, they were quicker than us, they put us under pressure, and when you come away from home, you’ve got to make sure in the early part of the game that we make the right decisions on the ball and there were so many times that we tried floaty balls in our own half to give them the opportunity to press us and put us under pressure, and played the ball backwards too many times. When it came to the back third, we didn’t defend our box anywhere near well enough and we’ve got punished.”

AND WHAT’S MORE: Asked about going in at half-time 3-0 down, Parkinson added: “We had a chat at half-time about what we felt we needed to do better and then we’ve conceded a goal which obviously, 4-0 away from home is always going to be tough. We then had a period where we’ve had chances, we hit the bar, we tried to create something but to be fair to them, they defended really well and made it difficult and protected the goal. Then we’ve conceded a fifth which is just too soft because if you’re getting beat 4-0 away from home, make sure you don’t get beat 5-0 and make it any worse and you stand strong as a team. It’s as disappointing, that goal, even though the game is over at that point, as any of the others.”

THE BIGGER PICTURE: Wrexham had been on a five-game unbeaten run in all competitions stretching back to their Carabao Cup Second Round defeat to Bradford at the end of August. The defeat not only ends that run of good form, but also does major damage to their goal difference in League Two. Before today it was +5, it’s now at 0 having scored 20 and conceded 20 in their nine fixtures thus far.