Devastated David Hodgson was almost lost for words after watching Darlington suffer their worst defeat in over a year.

Quakers were thumped 4-0 by a Shrewsbury side who were second bottom, hadn't scored four goals in their previous four games combined and had only won once in their last eight matches.

The damage was done in the first half when Shrewsbury scored three goals inside ten minutes, taking Quakers' goals against tally to ten in the last three games.

Darlington had one of the tightest defences in the country until they lost 3-1 at Boston ten days ago, and since then Quakers' promotion prospects have taken a battering, losing 3-0 at home to Rochdale on Sunday before yesterday's disaster.

Hodgson ditched his favoured 3-5-2 formation in favour of 4-4-2 and said: "After 30 minutes Mark Proctor asked me if I thought the formation was working and I said it was, but no sooner had I got the words out of my mouth they had taken the lead.

"Everything has gone horrendously wrong - I won't go through what was said at half-time. I'm lost for words. The fourth goal came from a diabolical pass by Matt Clarke who tried to pass to Joe Kendrick when he was in no position to, and then bang, it's 4-0.

"We don't look like scoring, our cutting edge has gone.

"The ironic thing is, since Alun Armstrong signed a new contract, we've only scored a penalty in our last three games.''

Gary Peters was celebrating his first win as Shrewsbury manager since taking over in the middle of last month - and described Darlington as 'headless chickens'.

He said: "They have some good individual players like Armsrong, Wijnhard, Hignett, Fleming and Maddison, but they weren't playing as a team. It was like 11 headless chickens running around.''

Read more about the Quakers here.