SOUTHEND United boss Kevin Maher felt Blues fully deserved their defeat against Aldershot Town.

The Shrimpers were beaten 2-1 at Roots Hall as they slumped to a fifth defeat in succession.

And Maher was disappointed with his side’s display.

“I thought we were poor,” said Maher.

“Even in the first half, we were winning 1-0 but I don’t think the levels were good enough in terms of performance and we got what we deserved today.

“We didn’t have enough quality in the final third.

“We turned it over cheaply and we looked like a side lacking confidence having lost games.”

Aldershot equalised in the second half with Tyler Frost on target and Maher was frustrated with how his side reacted to being pegged back.

“We gave the ball away cheaply, they walked through us and our heads seem to go after that,” said Maher.

“The second goal after that is an obvious mistake and one that we’ve seen a couple of times this year.

“It’s not good enough.

“We seem to get hit with something and we don’t recover well enough.”

Maher will now be focusing on making sure Blues bounce back at Altrincham next weekend.

But he hinted he would like to be able to make more changes.

“We’ll go back to work on Monday morning and if we have to drill the team we will drill the team,” said Maher.

“We want to make changes.

“You can’t lose five games in a row and not expect changes to happen.

“Because of the situation we’re in we haven’t been able to do that and to a certain extent the players are a little bit lucky with that.

“I’ve backed the players all the way through and the last four games have been tight but today wasn’t acceptable.”

Blues are now 10th in the table, eight points below the play-off positions.

But Maher believes there is no point talking about a top seven finish at this stage.

“We’re not thinking of that now, we’re thinking of getting a win because we need points on board,” said Maher.

“We can talk all you want about play-offs but not if you lose five in a row, no chance.

“What we’ve got to do is get a result next week.

“Talk is cheap, lets win a game before we talk about the play-offs because there’s too much talk going on at the minute.

“We’ve got to produce on the pitch.”

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