TRURO City boss John Askey admitted his side ‘were never at the races’ after suffering a 4-0 defeat at Scunthorpe United.

The loss, coupled with victory for Morecambe over Sutton United, sees City fall to the foot of the National League standings.

They fell behind in the first half when Joey Dawson lashed home from the edge of the box. Half chances for Christian Oxlade-Chamberlain and Connor Riley-Lowe were City’s brightest moments during the opening 45 and they trailed at the turnaround.

Dec Howe scored Scunthorpe’s second seven minutes after the restart and despite Sam Sanders coming close to halving the arrears, Alfie Beestin’s deflected effort put the game out of Truro’s sight with 20 minutes left.

Salt was then rubbed into City wounds as time ticked down with substitute Danny Whitehall scoring a fourth for the Iron, who remain unbeaten so far this term.

“We were never at the races from start to finish,” Askey said at full-time. “We were never in the game and it was a disappointing performance all round.

“We must do better, to put it mildly, and coming to places like this, it is tough, if you don’t set your stall out early on. You must stop the opposition playing to earn your own right to play, then you have problems.

“We gave Scunthorpe chances, by trying to dribble the ball out of trouble, when it should be up the other end of the park. Things like that happened too many times and overall, we just weren’t good enough.”

City have little time to lick their wounds however as the side are back in action on Tuesday evening when they are back on the road again, travelling to Brackley Town.

When asked how quickly it will be to pick his beleaguered troops up from a fifth successive away reverse, the 60-year-old admitted that it won’t be an easy task.

“It will be difficult after that,” Askey revealed. “ Those sorts of performances leave everyone deflated and you start to ask questions.

“However, our mindset will be that Scunthorpe has gone and we go into the Brackley match giving everything we have got so we try to forget today.

“We will be back in for training on Monday, trying to learn from the mistakes we have made.

“Hopefully we can recover well and prepare for Tuesday in the same fashion.”