FOOTBALL: Salford City sees 2-1 defeat against Mansfield Town

Salford City failed to take fourth place in SkyBet League Two on Tuesday night following a 2-1 defeat against Mansfield Town.

Mansfield hosted the match, which saw George Lepslie and Jordan Bowery score the club two goals in the first half.

Only one Salford goal was scored by Di’Shon Bernard two minutes into injury time consolation at the end.

Richie Wellens, Salford City club manager and former footballer, said: “It was no where near good enough.”

FULL TIME

Mansfield 2-1 Salford

A better second half from the Ammies and a late push saw a Bernard goal, But that wasn’t enough.#WeAreSalford🦁🔴 pic.twitter.com/iqn3xwXGjW

— Salford City FC (@SalfordCityFC) January 5, 2021

“I’d say they [Mansfield Town] played well, they played the pitch well, they obviously know the parts of the pitch that were really poor but that’s no excuse.

“We tried to play in front of them, we’re telling them all you need to do is put the ball forward, second balls, win your individual battles and we didn’t do any of that in the first half.

“Second half we huffed and puffed and gave it a go, and in the end we could have sneaked a point but if I’m being honest I still wouldn’t have been pleased with that because of our first half performance, it was nowhere near good enough.”

Key moments from last night’s trip to the One Call Stadium.#WeAreSalford 🦁🔴 pic.twitter.com/Hk2AUK0tcE

— Salford City FC (@SalfordCityFC) January 6, 2021

Wellens went on to say: “In first half their [Mansfield Town’s] centre halves at no point ever took any more than one touch, maybe at times they might have took just two very very rarely.”

“We were trying to bring balls down which are not balls you can bring down in these conditions. And we played the conditions really poorly but I think in the first 45 minutes we let every midfielder run.”

“It is really important to say that it was a big opportunity for us tonight but we was no where near good enough.”

“I keep hearing people say with playoffs we’re going to be in around promotion, I don’t necessarily see that on the pitch at the moment.”

“These lads have been great for me but I didn’t see that performance coming in terms of letting midfield runners go and switching off.”

“I just want to start seeing the things that got us some good results.”