Stephen Robinson was left to rue missed chances after Morecambe’s 5-0 defeat at the hands of Sunderland AFC in Sky Bet League One.
The hosts opened the scoring on 13 minutes through Ross Stewart, and the lead was doubled four minutes later through Nathan Broadhead.
11 minutes into the second half and the Black Cats added a third courtesy of Alex Pritchard, before a second for Broadhead and a fifth from Leon Dajaku completed the scoring, and Robinson says his side were punished for missing chances early on.
“We’ve a mountain to climb before the game has even started,” he said after conceding two early goals.
“We then passed the ball about, we looked pretty, we had chances, Jonah [Ayunga] has got to score, Aaron [Wildig] should score and we’ve a goal disallowed.
“Ultimately, if you’re going to defend like that at a stadium like this with good, good Championship players in the squad, then you’re going to get punished, and we got exactly what we deserved.
“It could’ve been two all if we had taken our chances, I think that’s the difference in the levels in terms of the quality they have at the top end of the pitch, they get chances, they take them, we get chances, we don’t.”
The Shrimps travel to Portsmouth in our next Sky Bet League One outing, and the gaffer says it’s time for leaders within the team to step forward.
He added: “The excuses need to be put away.
“It seems to be that when we go a couple of goals down, if we don’t get straight back into it, we’re quite weak.
“As I’ve said millions of times, we’re a very quiet squad, I need some leaders in the team, we have to try and get people to take responsibility and not accept conceding goals and accepting defeats.
“Yeah we’re at a bigger stadium with, yeah we’re at a bigger club with a bigger fan base and resources, but a lot of the things we can still control that we didn’t tonight.”