“WE can’t defend,” was manager Carl Heeley’s blunt assessment of his Worcester City team following their 3-1 defeat to Solihull Moors.

City were beaten for the sixth time on their own turf in Blue Square Bet North and have now won just once in the league since September 15.

Gary Birch and Junior English took advantage of poor marking to put Solihull 2-0 up inside 32 minutes and, despite Michael Taylor pulling one back before the break, Jay Denny struck a third three minutes into the second-half.

“You cannot give goals away like that,” said manager Heeley, whose side remain sixth in the table but having played more games than the teams around them.

“Two minutes before we came out we said don’t give a silly free-kick away, keep a high line and make sure you pick up your men. But we contrived to make three mistakes within two seconds for their first goal.

“For their second goal their player was on the half-way line with Ellis Deeney and Matt Breeze around him but he did a little trick to take both out of the game and put a simple ball in to a man nobody was marking.

“We got ourselves a little lifeline and talked about playing at a high tempo at the start of the second-half but we went and gifted another goal.

“With the greatest will in the world, you’re never going to win games if you’re just gifting goals away like that.

“We were chasing the game and rarely looked like getting back into it in all honesty.”