Ged Brannan 'devastated' by Morecambe's defeat at Wrexham

Brannan and John McMahon had taken control of first-team matters after Derek Adams’ departure for Ross County at the start of last week.

He had been hoping for a solid performance at the high-spending high flyers – but could only look on in frustration as the Shrimps suffered their heaviest league defeat since losing 6-0 at Crewe Alexandra on the opening day of the 2018/19 season.

Former Shrimp Paul Mullin netted a hat-trick with Joel Senior’s own goal, Jacob Mendy and Jamie Jones completing the scoring.

Brannan said: “I am devastated. I feel physically sick and would say in my whole career in football, as a player and a coach, I have never felt this bad.

“I didn’t expect this. We had a game plan and trained well all week.

“We spoke about the importance of not conceding early against a team like Wrexham, who are flying at home.

“We talked about quietening the crowd and staying in the game but we gave away two goals in the first six minutes and it was game over.

“I can’t defend us. We didn’t track runners, we didn’t win our headers and we didn’t do anything right defensively.

“We have a young team but they are good players and they all know they have a man to mark, tackles to win, runners to run with and we just didn’t do that.

“You have to do the basics in football if you are 16 or 35 and there are no excuses for us.”