STANLEY boss James Beattie has accepted responsibility for his side’s demoralising defeat at Shrewsbury on Tuesday night.

The Reds found themselves three goals and a man down after a nightmare first half before the hosts ran out 4-0 winners.

That left Stanley bottom of League 2 on goal  difference after losing their first three games, and Beattie could have pointed the finger at
several of his players,particularly rookie keeper Luke Simpson.

The 19-year-old was sent off after giving away the penalty for the Shrews’ second goal.

But the Reds’ boss deflected the attention from his players ahead of Saturday’s home game against Luton Town.

“It will be a big job to pick them up for Saturday,” he said. “We’ve had certain things happen at the club this week which haven’t helped, but they’re a young bunch and they’re willing to learn.

“And I’m more than willing to take the blame for the performance. I’ll take that on my shoulders squarely and we’ll come back and be okay.

“We need to keep our heads down because there are some very good players in that dressing room. As I say, I’ll back them all the way.

“The only thing we can do is keep working hard, role our sleeves up and try to get ready for Saturday.”

By ‘certain things’, Beattie was referring to a burglary at the club earlier this week. But he admitted his players switched off for the first two goals, which both came from clearances that were charged down by the home side.

“I don’t think we can deny if we want to win matches we can’t give goals away like that,” said Beattie.

“We talk about what we’re trying to do every game and some of the fundamentals never change. It doesn’t matter what level you are playing at, trying to gain space and territory to play football is one of them and to be dilly-dallying on the edge of your box is not one.

“There are things we need to look at, of course there are.

“For the first goal, it was unlucky for Luke and the nature of the goal hit the lads hard. We’re trying to get in to them not to let anything that happens in the game alter their thought process.

“But we started making bad decisions, which we wouldn’t normally make. I think the second goal was calamitous, maybe more calamitous than the first.

“It was unfortunate for Luke but it was another that the lads took to heart massively and affected us deeply. The lads were at sixes and sevens.

“Hopefully we’ll never play that badly again. It’s a result that we need to look at, there’s stuff that we need to address and we’ll keep working as hard as we can.”

At 1-0 down, Stanley did cause the hosts some problems, though, with James Gray sending their best chance wide from a Nicky Hunt cross.

“A couple of times in the first half we kept the ball and moved it around quickly," Beattie added. "We got Hunty in and were patient.

“The other stuff that went before that, that’s not what we’re about as a team. If we got past the first 20 minutes then nicked one, I still believe we could have got back into it.

“The lads played much better second half, we only lost it 1-0 so it was an improvement.”