McMahon: Rovers didn't turn up

Interim Tranmere manager John McMahon admitted his side were well off the pace at Stevenage on Saturday.

Rovers were beaten 3-1 by their relegation rivals, who remain in the bottom four but are now just one place and one point behind Rovers in the table. Quick-fire goals from Darius Charles and John Mousinho added to Jimmy Smith's first-half strike as the home side stretched their unbeaten run to four league games. Curtis Obeng's own goal with two minutes left was nothing more than a consolation for McMahon's men. "Obviously we're disappointed. Too many of us didn't turn up, it was a poor team performance, a lot of poor individual performances," said McMahon. "But again we need to analyse it, look at where we can improve as individuals and as team and we'll do that. "For large spells of the game I thought we were comfortable. We knew they'd be strong and direct, we know all about their strengths and weaknesses but we just couldn't cope with the physicality and how they went about their work. We just couldn't handle it. "I think all three goals were disappointing defensively really. We need to deal with those sort of situations a lot better. We rushed, we panicked, we need to do a lot better than that. "We thought we could get the win, obviously it didn't work out that way. Maybe we need to think about what we do on the training ground. You can't legislate for some of our defending here and question where our game plan went."