Visits to Essex have bought Welling United little joy so far this season and the run continued with a defeat at Concord Rangers.

Speaking immediately after the game, Welling United manager Mark Goldberg was at a loss to explain where it all went wrong. “Just no excuse, really, for the way that we turned up today”. He said. “Trying to get my head around it because we told them (the players) that we can’t disrespect them (Concord Rangers).

“We said that we had to make sure that we were on our game. The least we do is we work harder than everybody and then if we start popping the ball around we’ll find holes in their defence and we’ll get our chances. Unfortunately it was quite the opposite. Everything we asked them to do, everything that we worked on pre-season, all the way through to where we are now. For some reason we did the opposite and we played in the wrong areas.

“We gave the ball away every time. Even when we won the ball back, which we didn’t do well enough, we gave the ball away. It was a poor performance and all I can do is apologise for everybody who made the journey here because that was a disgrace today.”

For the first twenty minutes or so, Welling had the better of it before conceding but even then Goldberg was unhappy. “We were on top in terms of we had a lot of corners, free kicks.” he continued “We never had a clear shot on goal. We had a lot of possession and we did start quite confidently but just the way we conceded.

“We should have done better at source and one player running through three of our players to get a cross in and then two players getting the better of our two centre halves in the six yard box is just not good enough. I wonder if even the keeper could have come out.

“You could name probably six players who were at fault for that first goal and then for some reason, instead of doing what we’ve done so many times this season in so far as we respond from when we are one nil down and we get ourselves back and we get ourselves organised. It was like a calamity. We just kept giving the ball away and they looked dangerous every time they went forward.”

Welling have a chance to rebound when they host Eastbourne Borough on Tuesday evening and Goldberg will be looking for a reaction. He said “I can’t understand it but whatever I do, how ever much you scream and shout, it isn’t going to change what happened out there on the pitch.

“I know that Hugo (Langton) and I didn’t prepare them the way that they went out, and they didn’t carry out our instructions on the pitch so we’ve got to make sure that whoever comes on on Tuesday, we get back to basics. Everybody does what they have to do, they’re organised, they work hard and they put it right.”