It was men against boys, says Diamonds boss Burgess

The visitors struck three times in the first half at Hayden Road last night and then added four more for good measure after the break with Diamonds being unable to cope with their attacking players.

The heavy loss came just three days after Diamonds had picked up a morale-boosting first win of the season as they won 2-1 at Barwell.

But they were brought crashing back down to earth with the big defeat leaving them entrenched in the bottom two in the Southern League Premier Central.

And it was a performance that left manager Burgess furious.

“It was the absolute opposite to Saturday,” the Diamonds boss said.

“We didn’t show any desire to go and close down and we didn’t show any desire to go and affect the ball. We were five or 10 yards off players.

“Absolutely everything we did on Saturday, we haven’t done and when you don’t do the good things, that’s what can happen.

“I just can’t believe that we didn’t get anywhere near to what got us the result on Saturday.

“That was about working hard, togetherness, effort and enthusiasm and we didn’t show any of that. We got what we deserved.

“The two goals just before the break killed us. If you’re going in at 1-0 you’ve got a fighting chance.

“Even so, we said at half-time that if we got the next goal you never know what’s going to happen.

“But it was men against boys at times and the second half was very alarming.

“I felt around the club a bit that people were expecting us to get beaten.

“I get that because of the way the season has gone but I’m not accepting getting beaten against anyone in this league.

“You can’t say that we won last Saturday, we’ll get beat tonight and then we’ll go and win at Hednesford at the weekend. No chance, I’m not interested in that. We have got to try to win every game we play.

“I’ll accept responsibility for it because it’s my team, I brought the players in and I put them out on the pitch.

“But, on the back of that, I have to make sure the players understand the frustrations and understand that we have got to do something about it quickly.”

Diamonds weren’t helped by a defence decimated by injuries with Evangelos-Nikalaos Empochontsif and Matthew Fossen ruled out while Courntey Lashley had to be withdrawn in the first half.

Under-23 centre-half Joshua Going was handed his first-team debut and, although Diamonds shipped seven goals, Burgess felt the youngster “didn’t let anyone down”.

“We have got injuries and we’ve got people missing for various reasons and that’s frustrating and it doesn’t help, obviously,” he added.

“I thought Josh Going came in and didn’t let anyone down. He’s a centre-half, we’ve lost 7-0 and he was probably our best player. The lad came out with loads of credit.

“But we are a bit patched up. We need to bring bodies in, I’m working on it and we will keep working on it and trying to improve.”