Magpies players and coaching staff apologise to fans after Irons defeat

Maidenhead United's players and management team personally apologised to their travelling away support in the aftermath of Saturday's disappointing 3-0 defeat to Scunthorpe United, however, those fans were also assured the Magpies will find a way to turn their form around.

It's rare for assistant boss Ryan Peters not to take any positives from a Magpies' performance, but he was struggling to come up with even one as he reflected on their 'embarrassingly poor' display.

This was a shadow of the side that had kicked off the new year in such positive fashion, nullifying a bright-looking Wealdstone team in a goalless draw at York Road. But, for whatever reason, they were chasing shadows from the opening minutes of this encounter at Glanford Park, and it was Caolan Lavery who profited, bagging a hat-trick as the Iron recorded only their fourth league victory of the season.

It leaves the Magpies without a league win since November 19, but they can take stock of their situation away from the National League this week as they prepare for a home game against Marlow in the Berks & Bucks Senior Cup tomorrow night (Tuesday) and Saturday's trip to Dagenham & Redbridge in the fourth round of the FA Trophy.

This result leaves the Magpies seven points clear of the bottom four, however - while that gap has hardly closed in recent weeks - the sides below them will start to pick them off if they can't rediscover some of their form from earlier in the season.

Speaking to Maidenhead United media officer, Grace Scott, on Saturday evening, Peters said: “Frustrated, annoyed, angry. It was an embarrassingly poor performance from us. There are some fans who have travelled a long way to watch us play and we were embarrassingly poor. The gaffer has had some harsh words to say to them, and rightly so. But we’ve got a break from the league now and hopefully we can tidy up some things in training to make sure we’re never like that again.

“Normally, I’m quite positive, but this was a bad game. We’ve had a couple of half chances, but they could have had a hell of a lot more goals today. We were off it right from the very start and it’s cost us, and we need to do better.

“It’s going to be from training, working on shapes and working on patterns and an emphasis on getting tighter to people so they can’t play around us. Lots more needs to be done in training from the result today. We went over to the fans straight after the game to apologise. It’s not like us, but that was an incredibly poor performance. They’ve spent their hard-earned money to come and watch us and they expect a lot more. We can only apologise again but rest assured we will turn this around.”

W Defender Idris Odutayo has also extended his loan spell from Fulham until the end of the season.