St Albans City joint manager James Gray has conceded his side’s play-off hopes are over after their 2-1 defeat at Chelmsford City on Saturday.

The Saints slipped down to 14th in the Conference South and are ten points off the top-five following their 14th loss of the season.

Gray criticised his team’s first-half performance and feels his side will have to concentrate on securing as high a finish as possible in their first season back in the division following promotion.

The Saints boss said “I can’t go too overboard about this. I felt like I was on the edge of gripping people by the throat at half-time because it was that important to me.

“My main talk was we needed to take three points for our season to continue because if we had any hopes of getting in the play-offs it was a must.

“That’s gone now so I feel we just need to kick on and try to establish ourselves and finish as high as we can. I actually don’t think we can make the play-offs now.”

Chelmsford dominated the first half and were rewarded with the opening goal when Joe Ward’s speculative effort managed to beat the defence and goalkeeper Joe Welch.

Gray said: “I sent them out early and said ‘get out of my face basically because I’m sick of seeing you’.

“I wanted them to prove they want to wear that yellow shirt and if they didn’t I would have said move on. That was a gutless first half.

“I really felt that and I told them. It was a spineless performance and I'm not going to have that but the boys responded well which is good because if they hadn’t it would have been a tough week especially for them.”

The Saints fell further behind after 56 minutes when Jack Bridge’s cross was turned into his own net by Darren Locke.

But the visitors pulled one back midway through the half when John Frendo’s scissor kick was parried by Tom Lovelock and Locke followed up to score at the right end.

Gray said: “This season’s been a story of too many missed opportunities for us.

“You look at the defeats column and we’ve lost far too many games where we should have taken points and this was probably another one of them.”

The manager added: “It’s more about stabilising and see what we’re going to need for next season.

“Our target at the start of the season was to stay in this division. But I put the threshold higher and I’m a winner. I want to win every game of football I play in.”

Gray and Graham Golds take charge of their 100th league game tonight at Havant & Waterlooville.

The Saints follow this up with a home game against fourth-placed Basingstoke Town on Saturday afternoon.