Pressure rises as Gainsborough Trinity suffer home hammering by leaders Farsley

Despite a bright start, it was a third defeat in a row as three goals in eight first half minutes sealed the points.

Trinity are now four points off the play-off places with a huge home game with mid-table Stalybridge Celtic ahead on Saturday.

Sinnott admitted his position would be under intense scrutiny on recent results, saying: “Any manager, even if they are up at the top in a two or three horse race, that says they don’t feel the pressure for me is telling fibs.

“It comes with having to win. It’s not nice. It’s a horrible feeling. We have to do something to rectify it.

“You always think about your own position, even when you are doing well, if that makes sense. There are two sides to a coin.

“As a game it’s a lot more analysed now, even at non-League level without being disrespectful. The analysis from the top echelons has filtered through.

“So these questions will be asked and they are understandable.

“Time moves on and it will be different again in another 10 years with even more analysis going on.

“It’s been a difficult evening and, from the manager’s point of view, I can only apologise to the supporters for that. It leaves a very bitter pill to swallow.”

Trinity fell behind on 21 minutes but found themselves 4-0 down and the game over before half-time.

“To concede three goals in such a short space of time really killed us. We never recovered from it,” he said.

“Before they scored I thought we had started better than we had in the previous couple of games. I thought we were more on the front foot.

“For the first goal we didn’t attack the cross coming in. They win the knock-back and it’s a clinical finish. If you’re not going to mark in your box you’re going to pay the price – and we did.

“We didn’t deal with second balls from the crosses. That was probably the big difference. You look at some of the crosses we put in, they were clearing their lines better than we were. I thought they were a very effective team.”

Sinnott said he was a big admirer of Farnsley.

“I like the way they play their football. They play in the right way,” he said.

“They play an aggressive way and they are on you quickly and will counter quickly. That’s the football I like to observe.

“They were absolutely ruthless with their goals.

“We went in 4-0 down at half-time and they were still smelling blood. You could tell.

“We changed the system in the second half and went to a 3-4-3 just to maybe give them something to think about and we maybe disrupted their rhythm a bit, though they did score another one.

“It’s down to players’ decision-making and it’s down to players’ mentality and how they approach a game.

“If you were a neutral tonight you’d say you can understand why Farnsley are where they are as they are brimming with confidence while you tell we have had a couple of negative results.

“You concede one goal but you don’t then do what we did and concede another two within three or four minutes.

“We gave the ball away in areas that are really going to get you punished.”

But Sinnott is not giving up on the play-offs yet.

“It’s now down to everybody involved in the group,” he said.

“There are 11 games to go, three points on offer in each and it only takes a couple of results to get a bit of momentum.”

Trinity have now leaked nine goals in two home games.

“It’s down to individual responsibility and collective responsibility,” said Sinnott.

“That is now nine goals in two games from a back four that had been very, very resilient. It has to be cured otherwise it will cause us serious harm.

“For the first 19 minutes we were getting a foot in and probing. But then it went bang, goal, bang, goal and you’re on the canvas the same as it was a couple of weeks ago against Warrington.”