Barrow AFC manager Ian Evatt was almost left speechless by the manner of the goals his side conceded in the second half of their 3-2 defeat against Stockport County on Tuesday night.

For the second away game this season, the Bluebirds threw away a half-time lead - in fact, they allowed the match at Edgeley Park to be turned on its head by the Hatters by the time seven minutes of the second half had been played.

Their collapse after the break came just three days after the AFC backline had produced a much more assured display as they kept a clean sheet in the win against Eastleigh.

However, with four games of the campaign played, their defensive record needs to improve, as they have conceded eight goals in the three games they have lost.

Evatt said: “It’s not very often I’m lost for words, but I am with that. We cannot keep conceding goals at bad times like that.

“We’ve done the hard part in the first half by weathering an onslaught, we’ve had to change shape because of injury [to Patrick Brough] and to add to that, their formation was hurting us.

“We did that, we regained control of the game and it’s 1-0 and we come out in the second half and just hand them two goals in quick succession, and then we’re chasing the game.

“Then we get ourselves back into it and offer them up another goal before completely dominating the last 20 minutes.”

It was after Adam Thomas’ goal put Stockport 3-2 ahead that Barrow produced their best spell in a game where they often lacked control with or without the ball.

It was this period that led to Evatt’s second big frustration from the game, as the visitors failed to add to strikes from Scott Quigley and John Rooney.

“We created chance after chance after chance and we just missed simple opportunities,” Evatt said.

“Football is a funny game sometimes in that the bit in the middle is irrelevant. Football is won and lost in both boxes and at the minute, we’re losing the battle in both boxes. We’re not scoring enough in the opposition’s box and we’re conceding too many soft goals in our own box.

“That has to be better, we have to work harder and we have to be held accountable for what we’re doing. We have to put teams to the sword and we have to stop conceding soft goals, otherwise we’re going to have the same story as last season.”