NEW boss Andy Ritchie assessed his first match in charge and reflected: "We huffed and puffed but didn't have the cutting edge we needed."

Forced into a 4-3-3 formation because of injuries, he watched Town frustrate Scunthorpe until midway through the second half.

"At times we did things well but we never really caused them a threat," he said.

"We had to work pretty quickly on what we wanted to do with the team and maybe we should have switched our formation earlier than we did.

"We were getting a little bit ragged just before they scored, so maybe we should have gone to 4-4-2 that little bit earlier and got Danny Racchi on to give us that injection of pace that he's got.

"In the build-up, which I enjoyed despite it all being a bit of a whirlwind over Thursday and Friday, we thought we might be able to negate Scunthorpe's full-backs by going three up front and splitting wide.

"The idea was for the other two (Beckett and McAliskey) to work off Boothy, but he was suffering a little bit with his groin and we are going to have to assess him over the next couple of days."

Ritchie added: "With eight or nine players out we had to play a system we haven't really played before and I thought up to half time, if we had had a little bit more pace up front we might have caused them some trouble.

"In the second half I thought we had weathered the storm and we were just about to change to 4-4-2 when they scored.

"I wasn't too convinced about the goals. I thought Billy Sharp was offside for the first and, with the penalty for handball, Joe Skarz says the ball never hit his arm and he wasn't inside the box. These are the things which conspire against you and Joe is not a lad who will tell lies. He was disappointed the linesman gave it."

Ritchie praised Scunthorpe for a `magnificent' season and gave credit to physio Nigel Adkins, who took the reins after Brian Laws' departure. The home fans sang: "Who needs Mourinho, we've got our physio" during a pitch invasion at the final whistle.

"Scunthorpe will have to rely on people giving them players from the Premiership and I hope Nigel will get a few quid to strengthen his squad, because he knows it's going to be needed," explained Ritchie.

"They use the conditions at Glanford Park well and play to their strengths, but they are going up a class."

Asked what Town could learn from the Iron, Ritchie quipped: "We can make our pitch a lot smaller!"

And he added: "We know we want two or three new faces in the summer to add to our squad, even though we are missing quite a few players at the moment who would normally be closely in contention for places.

"The focus now is to get ready for the Millwall game with a few more people fit, hopefully, so that we can get the three points we need to stay up.

"I think someone would be very unlucky to go down with 52 points, but once we get that win under our belts it will hopefully make things a little easier.

"I'm very pleased, anyway, that Andy Holdsworth has agreed a new deal.

"Hopefully he'll put pen to paper this week and that will be another boost."