Carlisle boss Chris Beech bemoaned his side’s first-half performance after having to salvage a late 2-2 draw with Scunthorpe.

First-half efforts from Aaron Jarvis and Emmanuel Onariase seemingly secured struggling Scunthorpe a welcome win.

But Jordan Gibson struck with 10 minutes to go before Brennan Dickenson’s dramatic 95th-minute leveller at Brunton Park.

And Beech groaned: “The first half wasn’t good enough and the second half we score two goals and keep a clean sheet.

“It’s not good enough to concede two goals from corners. You’ve got to credit the opponent for the way they set up.

“I don’t know why we start so slowly. We don’t prepare like that.

“There are a lot of mistakes when they weren’t under too much pressure.

“It’s very frustrating and it comes from things which are very avoidable.

“We’ve gone all in to get a goal so every credit to our centre halves because they were put on the edge of a cliff in the second half.

“We don’t want to be putting ourselves in that position trying to gain three points. We dug ourselves out of a big hole if I’m being honest.”

The Iron had shipped six goals without scoring in the two games heading into this outing.

And after agonisingly seeing a 2-0 lead slip through their fingers, boss Neil Cox said: “At the moment that feels like a defeat.

“We’ll get ourselves together and re-evaluate. We knew what we would be in for in the second half. It’s hard to get out against them.

“We got in their half a couple of times and we wasted our chances.

“They just smashed it into our half and waited for something to drop.

“Nothing really dropped. Rory Watson made just one save I think.

“There was a little bit of sloppy play from us and we go 2-1 then it’s 2-2. But that’s football and you have to take it. It’s tough.

“We came out here with aggression away from home and that’s the way we want to play. We got overloaded around the far post and we just didn’t deal with it.

“We’ve got to go away from here and say we would have taken a 2-2 before the game.”