Ian Burchnall says Torquay United would swap places with Notts County "immediately" as he urged the Magpies to learn lessons from their Gulls horror show.
The Magpies were crushed 5-1 by Gary Johnson's side at the weekend as they slipped to the heaviest defeat in the National League since relegation in 2019. Notts had given themselves hope of a result when Kyle Wootton made it 2-1, but a late collapse made for a painful journey home for the 600 travelling fans.
Torquay basked in the glory of an excellent result at Plainmoor, but Burchnall said the Gulls would happily sit where the Magpies are in the table as they chase a play-off spot for the third consecutive season.
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"We just have to take our medicine," he said. We've got games coming up and we are sitting sixth," he said. "I am sure if you asked Torquay, they would swap places with us now. They'd take a 5-1 defeat and sit sixth. They danced but I am sure if you asked them if they wanted to swap immediately.
"We're above them for a reason. We didn't show that and they were better than us. But we are where we are. We lost a bit of ground on the top three and that's very frustrating. We just have to take some big lessons from this.
"When we get to the end of the season we are going to have more games like this when teams fly out of the traps. They see a window of opportunity if they can get on top of us in key moments, like winning first and second balls. When we don't match them with that, then of course we have a problem."
Notts' performance drew plenty of criticism from fans over the weekend, given many of then had stayed on the coast for the weekend. And Burchnall conceded that his side had left supporters shortchanged and was disappointed the players were unable to match Torquay's intensity.
"That's a frustration and we're not happy about that at all," he said. We had great travelling support and we let them down. We knew they would hit Danny Wright and they'd get runners off him. Danny Wright was excellent and a real handful. Then Lemonheigh-Evans and Little just ran.
"We didn't match that and that is some of the fundamentals. We know the way we play but we didn't get close to being able to do that because we didn't match the intensity of Torquay. That's a huge frustration."
