IN reflecting upon his side’s devastating late defeat, Mark Beesley says Warrington Town “beat themselves” against Gloucester City.

Harry Pinchard’s injury-time winner allowed the relegation-threatened Tigers to snatch a 2-1 victory, which means Town have now lost back-to-back home games.

It is also the first time they have lost when opening the scoring in more than two years – a run stretching back 45 games to February 2022 – as they missed the chance to close the gap to the National League North play-off places.

Connor Woods had fired Town into an early lead, but chances to extend that advantage went begging before substitute Ben Beresford pulled Gloucester level with his first touch of the ball.

A draw would have been seen as a disappointment, but Pinchard’s winner meant Beesley cut a frustrated and annoyed figure post-match.

“They were probably the two easiest goals we’ve given away in three years today,” he said.

“From our point of view, it’s poor decision-making and its cost us.

“We should have been out of sight after half an hour and definitely by half time, but if you give teams a leg-up by not scoring goals, that can happen.

“We didn’t do enough in the second half – we still made chances but if you’re going to make the mistakes we did and come up with the decision-making we did, it’s going to cost you and today it did.

“I don’t think they’ve done anything to beat us. We’ve beaten ourselves.

“That’s not being disrespectful but from our point of view, we’ve given them two goals.

“They weren’t exactly opening us up and Dan (Atherton) wasn’t making any saves but if we’re not ruthless in killing teams off, other teams could score when they get their chances and that’s what happened.

“They finished the two chances they got well, we had 10 and only scored one.”

At one stage while they were 1-0 up, only goal difference was keeping Town out of the top seven but the defeat drops them to 11th in the table, four points shy of the play-off spots.

However, Beesley was keen to play down the significance of the setback in terms of any potential bid to gatecrash the promotion shake-up.

“It's a missed opportunity to win a game of football,” he said.

“The bigger picture is outstanding for us but we’ve missed an opportunity today to gain three more points.

“It doesn’t taste very nice and we’ve got to learn from it quickly as from our point of view, that was really disappointing.

“We’ve given them three points today and that’s the first time we’ve done that this season.

“Considering we’re 39 games in and it’s the first time we’ve done that, it’s not too bad but we’ve got to be better than we were today.

“We weren’t ruthless enough and we’ve got to learn from that, especially the younger players we’ve got in forward areas.

“They’ve got to put chances away or make a better final pass, but the biggest thing today was that our decision-making was poor after the first half an hour.”