'It hurts' - County boss Paterson on slow start

Martin Paterson's men have picked up just one point from their opening three League Two matches and were knocked out of the Carabao Cup first-round stage

Notts County boss Martin Paterson says he is hurting following his side's stoppage-time defeat at Barrow on Saturday.

Lewis Shipley's goal seven minutes into additional time gave Barrow their first win of the season and left County with just one point from a possible nine in their opening three League Two fixtures.

"It does hurt," Paterson told BBC Radio Nottingham following the match.

"There's many different reasons in terms of you talk about hurting.

"It might be easy if you just focus on the last minute. What hurts the most is, again, we start the first half and we don't look ourselves at all.

"[Giving away] simple passes, not things we have worked on, and that's where my honesty probably opens me up for criticism.

"The first [Barrow] goal is a high press moment and we're so passive. We don't work on that.

"We seem to be really easy to score against in those quick moments. We have to do so much to score our goal. The first-half performance is not good enough."

'We're in a little sticky spell'

Despite County's slow start to the season, Paterson is confident he can turn the Magpies' fortunes around.

"I'm not worried. What I quickly need to do is dig it out and rid of it," he added.

"It takes a long time for us to get up the field, I'm aware of that.

"In the second half, we had a response from the first-half performance but I am sick of saying that as well, if I'm honest.

"Second half we dominated the ball, we pass the ball properly and forward and start to run in behind and we start to look like us again.

"We're in a little sticky spell and there's no hiding that.

"It's almost like 50% of the time we're bad and 50% we're good. But in the bad, we don't stay inside the game and dig it out and in the good we don't punish enough. I accept full responsibility for that."