Accrington 4 United 2

United boss Paul Buckle pulled no punches in an honest assessment of his team's efforts in the 4-2 defeat at Accrington: 'I thought it was a fair result, we got ourselves in front and started brightly. The remit for the day was to get the ball forward, the pitch was heavy and in the end I thought Accrington coped with the conditions better than we did and credit to them.

'They deserved the three points; we didn't deserve anything if I'm honest with the players and myself. On a pitch like this today it is a totally different game to the one we saw at Plainmoor last Tuesday. Plainmoor is a good surface and we can get it down and pass it but today we needed different qualities which were to fight for the ball and a way of playing which was to make Accrington face their own goal but we weren't good enough to do it.

'Their equalizer looked a penalty, I thought their two centre forwards caused us havoc all afternoon and they deserved to get back into the game. They were pressing us when we were a goal up and it looked like only a matter of time before they were going to score. We were trying to get the message on to clear our lines and get the basics right, get the ball in behind them, get it forward but we couldn't seem to do it.

'We were poor today, I can't make excuses for any of us, we took all the credit last Tuesday night and this has brought us back down to earth with a bump. We didn't do the basics right, we weren't nasty enough; we weren't horrible enough on what was a nasty pitch and a horrible day. If you don't work really hard and scrap it out and show those fighting qualities then normally you will get beaten.

'We had three one-on-ones in the last five minutes and they all came from putting the ball forward and asking the question of their defence and actually they couldn't cope with it. If we had stuck to the game plan we could have at least come away with a point today but we didn't and we don't deserve anything.

'Wayne Carlisle missed out with a sore hamstring and wasn't quite right so there is no way I could even put him on the bench with that. Tyrone Thompson came in and he has played very well for us away from home this season but we struggled all over, I think if I'm honest I can only think of two or three players who performed today.'