Salford City manager Karl Robinson was left frustrated by individual mistakes made by his side, as they slipped to their third league defeat in a row, losing 2-0 to Chesterfield.
The disappointing result comes just after Salford outclassed local rivals Stockport County in the Vertu Trophy, despite being a division lower than their opponents.
The first half was largely dominated by the hosts, with the best chance falling to Spireites striker Lee Bonis, who found himself in a good position in the box, but spurned his effort well wide.
Chesterfield’s dominance was almost rewarded just after the break, as Dilan Markanday’s cross-cum-shot was initially saved by Salford keeper Mark Howard, before being cleared off the line by Brandon Cooper.
The deadlock was finally broken just past the hour mark, as Chey Dunkley’s square header was turned into his own net by Ollie Turton.
Salford then had their best spell of the match, as Dan Udoh went close to equalising, as his low, deflected effort was tipped onto the post by Chesterfield’s goalkeeper Zachary Hemming.
The game was then wrapped up by the hosts in the final ten minutes, as Salford failed to deal with substitute James Berry’s cross, before fellow replacement Ronan Darcy fired home, despite seeing his initial effort saved by Howard.
Robinson said: “We weren’t really unlucky. We can say unlucky sometimes, we can be positive in defeat sometimes. I looked at the game as a whole and even though we didn’t play well, we denied opportunities for the opposition. It’s normal that you go away from home and you don’t let them get their crowd up, you don’t let them have chance after chance and we did that.
“I felt that second half, again it was very even. Then we had a ball that dropped and I felt that we lost the first aerial duel, we didn’t stay with our man. Not only that but the header ends up missing him and we end up putting the ball in the back of our own net.
“This is not me saying we were good second half, but the chance for Dan is a great chance, probably the best of the game, other than their second goal. There was a blatant penalty (not given) on Kelly Nmai. Between goal one and goal two, we probably had the best moment in the game, it didn’t fall on the right side for Salford.
“Have we had a go at the players, as you’d imagine yes, because we can’t keep saying ‘well done, well done’, you need a bit of a shock every now and again to demand more as a team. We have to make sure as a collective we don’t make these small things habits. You go through moments where you find it hard to find that win, things just don’t fall for you, they fall for the opposition.
“We’re actually going through that moment and it’s about having clarity within that. We do that, we’ll come out of it fine.”
The result leaves the Ammies in ninth place, three points outside of the automatic promotion spots, but just a point off the playoffs.
Robinson, looking ahead to his team’s next game, said: “We’ve got to pick ourselves up, we have to look at the individual mistakes and make sure we don’t make them again. As a collective we have to do better, as a unit we have to be stronger. We have to accept responsibility for individual errors and that’s in both boxes.
“I need to find leaders, I need to find maturity, we need to find security in our play and we need to get back to doing what we were doing right. We do that and we’ll be a force for anybody.”
Salford are set to host Oldham Athletic on Saturday, looking to bounce back and put themselves back amongst the promotion hopefuls.
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