WORCESTER City manager Richard Dryden apologised to the club’s fans following the 5-0 thrashing at Maidenhead.

Three goals in the first-half and two more after the break handed City their heaviest defeat of the season and dropped them down to ninth in the Blue Square South table.

A section of their travelling support stayed behind after the game at York Road to vent their anger at the team’s performance.

Assistant manager Carl Heeley also needed restraining as comments were hurled from the terraces.

Dryden, whose team have now lost their unbeaten away record, took time out at the end of his team talk to discuss the game with fans and admitted they had been accurate in their assessment.

The City boss said: “They are probably right to vent their anger.

“It’s a long journey down, they’ve paid their money and they expected to see how we’ve been playing week in, week out away from home and we were a disgrace.

“I went to see a few supporters after the game and I hate apologising for our performance because that hurts me, but it was warranted.

“I had a constructive talk with a few of them but when they say there was no passion that really hurts. What hurts even more is that they’re right.

“Everybody at a club gets frustrated when you get beaten, especially when you’ve come a long way to watch.

“If I could get in the stand and scream at the players I probably would have because for how I want to play that’s not acceptable.

“It’s going to be a long week, I wish we had another game but we haven’t.

“We will work hard, there’s a reserve game tonight then we’ll train tomorrow and Thursday and work on stuff because it looked like it was just a side that turned out from a pub and had no cohesion from start to finish.”

For goalkeeper Danny McDonnell, the result marked the end of a torrid few days that have seen him concede seven goals.

The City custodian was at a loss to explain the dramatic turnaround in the team’s fortunes, coming just a week after the 2-0 success at Havant and Waterlooville.

“We didn't see it coming,” he said. “Nobody performed to standard and it’s inexcusable. Everybody’s extremely disappointed. It’s not good enough for the supporters who’ve come down, we let ourselves down, we’ve let them down and we’ve let the manager down. It’s a disappointed dressing room.

“Individual errors cost us but we weren’t at the races and hopefully it’s a one-off.

“On the back of a disappointing result on Monday it makes it worse but as long as we can put a stop to it as soon as possible we can get back to where we were and remember the things we were doing right no more than a week ago.

“A week is a long time in football and it’s been a long week for some of us.

“We have got to just look forward to next week and hopefully look to do the double over Welling and everybody improve their performances.”