Peterborough Sports boss apologises for woeful 8-0 loss in Worksop before laying into his players

Gash issued an apology to angry fans and demanded his relegated team make amends in the final game of the season at Hereford United next Saturday (April 25), a match that has plenty of meaning for a home side battling against the drop.

Gash insisted he’d never been involved a game like it in his long, and successful career, in non-league football. He didn’t use the pre-match disruption caused by key players,Connor Wood and Marcel Oakley, missing the match because of a train delay as an excuse.

It could have been even worse for Sports as it was 6-0 at half-time and 8-0 with half an hour to go by which time the city side had been reduced to nine men by red cards for abusive language for Elliott Whitehouse and Zach Willis.

"Everything that happened on the pitch was our own doing,” Gash told Peterborough Community Radio. “Don’t get me wrong Worksop were very impressive in everything they did from a fast start, the tempo of their play and their professionalism. Their mindset and mentality compared to our approach was like chalk and cheese.

“It’s up to me who I pick and I will take responsibility for what happened. Fans have a right to be angry and I understand that and I apologise.

"But, looking at it from the players’ point of view, I’ve been in men’s football for 23 years and never been involved in a game like that. I would never let that happen.

“I know what it takes to win games at this level and the level above, but I was surrounded by winners who didn’t let standards slide. We don’t have that.

"Every time you represent Peterborough Sports in training or in matches you make sure your standards are high and you perform to the best of your ability. We are not doing that at the moment and it’s really hard to take. I have to take it on the chin as the manager, but that was not a Michael Gash team out there. It was nowhere near it.

"What I said in the dressing room will stay there, but there are no excuses for performing like that. I had a call just before midday from Connor and Marcel to say their train had stopped and if they’d gone back home and jumped in a car they wouldn’t have got here until 3.30pm. Obviously that wasn’t ideal, but it can happen at a part-time club

"But if you don’t do your jobs on the pitch you will get a scoreline like we suffered. It’s so frustrating and we have to be a million times better next week at Hereford. They have to turn in a performance that makes it look like a different team was out there. There were two or three who kept running when we were down to nine men, but we needed more than that.”