Dagenham & Redbridge 6, Aldershot Town 1

FOUR goals in an horrific 19-minute spell early in the first half condemned Aldershot Town to a humiliating 6-1 drubbing at the Chigwell Construction Stadium on Saturday.

Not only did it wreck assistant Shots boss Anwar Uddin’s homecoming after six golden years at Dagenham as skipper, it ruthlessly ended a promising three-game run in which the Shots had looked a lot more secure.

Having cruelly been beaten by a 92nd-minute goal at Harrogate, the Shots dug in for a decent point at Boreham Wood before beating Maidenhead 2-0 at the EBB.

But that all counted for nothing on Saturday as two goals from Daggers debutant Ben House and further strikes from Manny Onariase and Joan Luque left the Shots reeling at 4-0 down after just 25 minutes. And further goals from Will Wright and Joe Quigley made it 6-0 before the Shots netted a consolation courtesy of Robbie Tinkler as Aldershot slumped to their 11th defeat of the season.

“The whole thing was just a great big disappointment. We started the game and looked reasonably comfortable and then they scored the first goal and it was like someone kneecapped every single player on the team, they just fell apart,” said Shots boss Danny Searle.

“Technically and tactically we were far too deep and the distances between our back four and our midfield four was wrong, we were just very open and regardless of what we kept saying from the sideline they just weren’t taking it on board. For me, it was a massive mentality issue on Saturday.”

The upshot of Saturday’s shellacking at Dagenham and a frank post-match discussion with angry fans was a soul-searching return to training.

“Mondays are normally a little bit quieter because it’s a recovery day after a game on Saturday, but that all went out the window, we worked very hard,” continued Searle.

“The boys didn’t go out and do it on purpose, no-one went out and said ‘let’s be horrendous today and get beat 6-1’. I’ve never come across a player in my life who intentionally goes out to do that, and the boys are as devastated as anybody. We’ve got to get our heads down, work hard and get some kind of reaction that makes people understand that that’s a one off and that it’s not going to happen again. It was horrendous but these things do happen and we can’t just throw the baby out with the bath water, we’ve got to make sure we get our heads down and that it doesn’t happen again.

“It’s easy to look confident and it’s easy to look aggressive when your team’s doing well, the real characters are the ones who can roll their sleeves up and do it when things aren’t going so well.”

The acid test now comes at the EBB Stadium this weekend when the Shots hosts Notts County looking to put their miserable day in east London firmly behind them – and Searle is under no illusions that the focus of some fans’ attentions will be on the home dugout.

“I’m at the forefront of it because I’m the manager,” said Searle, “but anyone who thinks I put that team out on Saturday to do that doesn’t know what I’m about. But the only comments I would take umbrage at are when people say we’ve looked like that all season because I completely disagree with that. We’ve shown a lot of fight and a lot of character this season and we know where we are as a team.

“We haven’t got the best players in the league, we know that, we don’t pay the money that some clubs pay, but what we have had is a group that have worked really hard for the majority of the games. On Saturday, none of them did that and we paid the penalty, but now we’ve got a game coming up and the chance to put it right.”