While Daryl McMahon has always claimed records don’t particularly interest him in terms of the bigger picture, the Fleet boss felt his side needn’t have surrendered their unbeaten away record at Moss Rose.

“If you’re going to lose it, you’re going to lose it to a good side and they are,” McMahon told BBC Radio’s Mark Taylor. “But I felt it didn’t have to end today because I thought we did enough to get something out of the game but you dust yourself down and move on to next week.

“We probably missed chances at key times and missed too many good chances really. You’ve got to probably be a bit more clinical. You can’t come to a side as good as Macclesfield and miss some of the chances we did and expect to get something out of the game.”

But the Fleet manager was pleased with his side’s application despite a slow start to each half. “I was pleased with the performance,” he explained. “Probably the first 10 minutes of the first half and the first 10 minutes of the second half we weren’t great. Other than that I thought we were a team that was always a threat, looking to create chances. Shields, Weston, Mills had opportunities in the first half.

“I think we let them have a lot of the ball because we thought we could counter them. I thought we countered on them really well. We knew we had Shields, Coulson, Weston and Cook when he came on at half-time, players with pace that we thought could break. We did break quite well at certain times and we didn’t capitalise on the opportunities we created.”

The only difference between the sides was an arguably fortuitous goal three minutes before half-time and McMahon felt the timing was a blow to his side. “It’s a great time for them to score,” he said. “If we got in at half-time 0-0 I thought maybe there’d be a bit more pressure on them, especially second-half and [the goal] probably eased that on them. We didn’t start great in the second half either and then I thought after 10 minutes we probably took control of the game. We changed shape and we pushed a few more bodies forward. We felt we could occupy their back four a little bit better. We were unlucky, I think we could have easily got a point today but they’re a good side and I wish them all the best for the season.”

https://soundcloud.com/eufcofficial/daryl-mcmahon-after-macclesfield