Woking assistant manager Simon Bassey was disappointed after his side lost 3-0 at league leaders Rochdale in the National League.

Goals from Kyron Gordon and Mani Dieseruvwe (2) gave Dale all three points in front of a crowd of 2,826 at the Crown Oil Arena.

Bassey said: “We know Rochdale are strong through the middle of the pitch, so we tried to be strong in there.

“We picked a diamond to play outside their two sixes and see if we could play through a little bit and look after the pitch out of possession.

“At times in the first half it worked well and at times we didn’t quite get the communication right.

“If you switch off like we did, you get punished. Good teams punish you.

“You can’t come away from home against a good footballing team and concede from a corner.

“Then we had to chase the game a little bit. We got a little bit sloppy. We got our press wrong and got played through in two passes. That can’t happen.

“I think we got caught up in the first half playing too many short passes, playing Rochdale’s type of game, which wasn’t what we planned.

“In the second half we played a little bit more vertical with a bit more energy.

“We played forward, picked the second balls up, and played with a little bit more intent.

“I thought we lacked belief in the first half. The opportunities we did get it, it didn’t look to me like we felt we were going to score. That disappoints me.

“At 2-0 the next goal is important and unfortunately for us we didn’t have the quality to find it and we gave another poor goal away.”