Johnson frustrated by Gulls’ display

GARY Johnson said he was ‘frustrated’ by Torquay United’s performance in the goalless draw against Eastleigh on Monday

– but he is ‘totally up for it’ as the Gulls go to Grimsby Town to try to rescue their National League play-off chase on Saturday.

After extending their winning run to four games with a 1-0 win at Woking on Good Friday, Torquay had the chances to beat Eastleigh – but didn’t take them at Plainmoor where a local sports club community day boosted the crowd to almost 3,500.

The point did mean the Gulls went up a place to ninth, but they are still seven points off that all-important seventh – with just five games to go.

Next opponents Grimsby are one of the teams above them, but it is Dagenham & Redbridge and Notts County that they really need to catch now.

Johnson said: “Of course we are not out of it yet – it just means that we have got to win more. But we are not going to get there playing like that. We didn’t have enough quality in our play today. I was frustrated with my team – certainly early on. We didn’t start with the quality that we wanted to start with, which we have been doing here. We got into the game a little bit but I didn’t think our performance was fantastic. However, we still created opportunities.”

Connor Lemonheigh-Evans, Keelan O’Connell and Asa Hall all missed really good chances, and on another day we could be talking about a 3-0 win. But it wasn’t to be, and now the focus will switch to the trip to Grimsby.

Johnson said: “When everybody sees the highlights there will be four or five good opportunities that we might have tucked away. And then as the game goes on and the opposition get more confident, they had two great chances at the end, as we did. But it was too close, we didn’t play like we were the team in 10th and they were the team in 16th or something. And that was disappointing.”

The referee, Tom Bishop, didn’t help. He had an awful game and many of his poor decisions affected Torquay’s play and momentum.

“If we don’t start well and the game becomes a battle you are at the referee’s mercy,” said

Johnson. “We have got to work very hard getting a flow back into our game.”