BOSS Mark Jermyn pulled no punches in his assessment of Dorchester’s performance following their 5-1 drubbing by Poole at the Avenue last night.

The Magpies’ player-manager even suggested that after four successive defeats in all competitions changes to the squad could be made.

“It’s a bitter pill to swallow,” he told Echosport. “As much as I want to protect my players, and over the time I’m here I will always try and do the best for them, I look at the goals and that was nothing to do with the way we set up.

“It was purely down to some poor individual performances.

“I was looking at some of their goals and I just couldn’t believe they had gone in.

“Since I’ve been back I’ve never been on the receiving end of something like that.

“Poole played well and I take my hat off to them, they are a good outfit with real quality in their team, but we just didn’t have the nous to compete with them.

“It was a big local derby but it was flat, and it may have been 5-1 but it would have hurt just as much as if it had been 1-0.

“The performance was so lacklustre and I called on our big players but they went missing, and that’s the first time I’ve felt disappointed by the players.

“I’ve learnt today that you have to give credit where credit is due and we’ve been humbled by Poole.

“I know we can be 100 per cent better than that.”

He continued: “As much as I want to back the players, it may be a case that we are going to have to look at our personnel and see if there needs to be any movement because I’m conscious we’ve lost four on the bounce now.”