'We went out with a whimper!' Craig Elliott has some harsh words for his below-par Boston United side

The Pilgrims’ nine-game unbeaten run was ended by the Brakes in a contest where Wes Atkinson gifted the away side the only goal of the game and Reece Thompson saw red for a rush of blood.

“It wasn’t good enough,” Elliott said.

“Unbeaten runs come to an end, but when they come to an end you’d like to think it’s because you’ve missed chances or played a good team.

“But we’ve gone out with a whimper today and, to be fair to them, they deserved to win that.

“I think we were flat. We had a couple of injuries at the wrong time.

“The game never really got going second half but, as an away team, they came and did a good job.”

Atkinson’s poor header back to keeper Jon Stewart allowed Ahmed Obeng to slot home the 53rd-minute winner.

“It’s a bad error. You can’t defend people for that,” Elliott said.

“We talked about how we could have played badly and taken a draw. There’s no defending him really.”

And turning his attention to Thompson, who was booked twice in the space of seconds for a foul on Callum Gittings and then throwing the ball at his opponent, Elliott had further harsh words.

He said: “The first was for a challenge and the second for throwing the ball at the player.

“He’s got nobody to blame but himself. It was unprofessional and he shouldn’t have done it.

“I can’t really remember any chances we created and in general we were poor.

“The standards we reached in recent months we were nowhere near, and that’s the disappointing thing for me - the manner in which we lost.”

A further blow for Boston was losing skipper Jordan Keane to a foot injury, which may leave him sidelined for some time.

“He thinks it’s his metatarsal so he’s going to go for an X-ray and see what the problem is,” the manager said.