DESPITE seeing his side suffer a 4-1 defeat at the hands of high-flying Ashton & Backwell, Shaun Gardiner was “chuffed” with his first game in charge of Westbury United last weekend.

The new Westbury chief saw his team hand joint league-leaders Ashton a shock as Marc Lanfear cracked home a scorching 30-yard effort to put the home side in front at Meadow Lane.

But after Gary Tugwell was shown a straight red card for a two-footed tackle on Aaron Allen midway through the half, the visitors took control, with Brendon Abood, Leon Britton, Adam Crooks and Lee Delaney all finding the net.

“It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if we’d kept eleven men on the pitch – the sending off had a real bearing on the game,” said Gardiner.

“We were all over them to start with and their manager said to me ‘I didn’t know what to say to my players at half-time because you were all over us’.

“He said that you wouldn’t know that we were the team that were at the bottom of the table.

“I was chuffed with how we played and there were a lot of positives to take out of it. It was really positive.

“I was meeting a few of the lads for the first time on Saturday but we tried to keep the same team that’s been playing recently.

“I’m talking to players all the time at the moment but that’s all it is so far.”

Despite their spirited performance against Ashton, Westbury have gone 14 games without a win in all competitions and currently sit second-from-bottom in the Toolstation League First Division.

Gardiner’s men host Oldland Abbotonians next.

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