ADY Pennock was unable to hide his frustrations after watching his Barrow AFC side fall to defeat against fellow strugglers Torquay United at Plainmoor.

Victory for the Gulls moves them off the foot of the National League table.

The gap between the Bluebirds and Solihull Moors, who occupy 21st place in the league – the last of the four relegation spots – is still only one point, which means that Barrow are still nervously looking over their shoulder at the trap door to National League North.

“It was very poor, they were better than us all over the pitch – it’s just not good enough,” said Pennock after goals from Sean McGinty, George Dowling and Luke Young extended AFC’s winless run in all competitions to seven matches.

Pennock, who saw his unbeaten away run as AFC manager ended by the result, believed his side got what they deserved from the game and expressed sympathy for the 53 Bluebirds fans who made the journey from far and wide to witness the encounter.

“We certainly got what we deserved today that’s for sure, and our fans who’ve come all that way to watch us – it just wasn’t good enough,” he said.

“We conceded three absolutely awful goals, but I’m not taking anything away from them. They deserved their three points, but we have to move on and forget about it, because it wasn’t good enough.”

Pennock, who gave debuts to three new signings – goalkeeper Steve Arnold, forward Luke James and defender Ollie Cook – at Plainmoor, said he would be looking for the current crop of players to lift the club out of trouble, and that they would need to show him more desire.

“At this present time we’ve got to deal with what we’ve got here, the players have got to show some more desire,” he said.

“It’s all about the players that we’ve got here at the moment and they will be the ones that we will be focusing on.”

After making eight changes from the FA Trophy replay against Brackley Town, Pennock insisted that the wholesale changes that he made didn’t have a bearing on the result against the Gulls.

“I don’t think the changes I made had an impact at all, if you recall from the first game against Brackley, I made four or five changes anyway,” said the Bluebirds manager.

With a home game against financially-stricken Hartlepool United next up for AFC on Saturday, the pressure is on to get results.

But Pennock believes a lot of hard work is required between now and the end of the season and that standards will have to improve to ensure National League survival.

“We’ve just got to work very hard now – it’s a big game against Hartlepool, they’re all big games now – it doesn’t matter who we play,” he said. “We are in a relegation fight and if they think they can keep producing performances like that then they are very much mistaken.”