Steve Brown was left scratching his head after Ebbsfleet's 2-1 defeat at Boreham Wood on Saturday afternoon.

The Fleet were second-best in Hertfordshire and Brown was bitterly disappointed by the display at Meadow Park.

He said: "We discussed it after the game and the players know that today was one of the very few times when they've not performed at a bar that we've set quite high.

"It's particularly hard to take when you don't understand the performance and where it's come from.

"You hope, when you have a performance like that, that the team has enough savvy, enough nous and enough trickery to get a 0-0 out of it or maybe even steal a 1-0 win."

Ebbsfleet looked defensively fragile right from the off. Centre-backs Yado Mambo and Anthony Acheampong never seemed to build up an understanding and they were caught out by a simple long ball for Boreham Wood's second goal.

Brown said: "When you're on the back foot, you've got to keep clean sheets, and we didn't look like a side that was going to keep a clean sheet.

"You do have to give Boreham Wood a bit of credit. Their front two, physically, got on top of our back two, which is very unusual for them. I asked them at half-time to be more physical and I asked them to be braver with the line, which cost us, because they got in over the top and scored.

"I won't stand here and openly criticise any of these players but they do understand that performance wasn't where we should be. That doesn't make them bad players. It makes it a bad performance."

Ebbsfleet's leading scorer Billy Bricknell was left on the bench, with Ben May chosen to play alongside Michael Thalassitis. And right-back Joe Howe was dropped for Chris Sessegnon.

Brown said: "We know this is quite a tricky place to come and I put a slightly different side out, made a couple of changes. I wanted to do a couple of different things but the performance was well below par.

"If every decision I made was the right decision, I wouldn't be here, would I?

"I have a squad of 17 or 18 and I can use that squad how I see fit. You open the door for a player to go in and take his chance. I opened the door to two players today and it just so happens they've had to perform in a poor performance."