PAUL Cox has warned his Barrow side could be in for a long season if they do not learn the lesson’s of Saturday’s opening-day defeat at Dagenham and Redbridge quickly.

The Bluebirds fell 2-1 at the National League title hopefuls, with Corey Whitely and Michael Cheek scoring in a first half dominated by the home side.

Dan Jones did net a late goal for AFC as they mounted a spirited late comeback, but there were a lot of areas for improvement from a side Cox knows has great potential, but which he also realises has a long way to go.

“I think it was an incredible learning curve,” he said. “We brought a number of players in, and looking back at pre-season, it can sometimes give you a false sense of security.

“What I said to the players after the game today is that the first half, I thought we were a million miles away, both with the ball and without the ball. We were very disjointed, everything that we weren’t last year.

“I thought in the second half we improved, we affected the game more against what I think is a good team who are going to finish in the top three.

“The players now need to learn and have an understanding of what this league is all about. If we do that, we will become a very effective side at this level of football. If we don’t, then it will be a very long season.”

Cox did feel that things improved with the introduction of strikers Harry Panayiotou and Dan Cockerline after the break.

Both made their National League debuts for the Bluebirds – it was Cockerline’s first appearance at all after a year of knee injury issues – and added impetus to the attack.

Cox said: “I thought Harry coming on in the little pocked behind the front two, and then Dan Cockerline – who we had to use today, even though I didn’t want to, because he has been out of football for a year, he hasn’t even been on a football pitch for a long time – meant we became a little bit more dynamic, we became more pro-active and we became a little bit more confident as the game went on.

“We scored a good goal, and the amount of times the ball was bouncing about their six-yard box, I was a bit disappointed, because they are sometimes tap-ins.

“There are a lot of things we can do better, but overall we have to put this down to being a learning curve, but the penny has to drop very quickly.”

Some of that learning will come down to the players getting to know Cox himself better.

The likes of Jack Barthram and Adi Yussuf had played only one game in pre-season, while only two of the starting 11 were at Holker Street last season – Moussa Diarra and Alex-Ray Harvey.

“Some of the players don’t know me personally at the minute – we have only been together for three, four, five weeks,” added Cox. “Some of the players have only known me for a matter of days – you look at Jack Barthram and you look at Adi coming in.

“There is this situation where expecting this to be the finished product today was never going to happen.

“We came up against a side today who have kept a strong nucleus of their side and who have signed some superb players in the summer. I think they’re going to be in that top three and going for automatic promotion.

“The one thing we need to do is learn. And very quickly, because football doesn’t give anyone any sentiment. We can’t think about last season, we can’t think about how far we have come. We need to get this group as galvanised and as focused and as switched-on as we can, as quickly as possible.”