Cheltenham boss Michael Duff felt his side produced a near-perfect away performance to win 2-0 at Southend

A 10th-minute penalty from Liam Sercombe and a 52nd-minute header from George Lloyd handed the Robins a comfortable victory at Roots Hall.

And Duff was happy to see his side return to winning ways after suffering a surprise 3-1 defeat to Grimsby last time out.

“We looked strong and it was a good reaction from Tuesday night,” said Duff.

“They didn’t really cause us any problems, we were totally dominant in the second half and we should have scored more goals.

“It was as good as an away performance I could’ve wished for.

“I was a bit disappointed at half-time because once we scored I thought we sort of went into cruise control.

“But we saw it out well and I was really pleased for Lloydy (George Lloyd) and I thought he deserved his goal.

“It’s a good result and you can’t take liberties with any team in this league.

“That’s also five clean sheets in five away games now so that always gives you a chance.”

Cheltenham opened the scoring after just 10 minutes with Liam Sercombe scoring from the penalty spot after Kyle Taylor had brought down George Long in the box.

Shrimpers striker Brandon Goodship wasted a good chance to equalise from close range before Sercombe was denied by Southend goalkeeper Mark Oxley at the start of the second half.

But the Robins continued to threaten and doubled their lead in the 52nd minute when Chris Hussey’s left-wing cross was headed into the bottom corner of the net by Lloyd.

Southend, who were relegated from Sky Bet League One last season, posed Cheltenham no problems and now sit bottom of the table without a win in nine games in all competitions.

And Mark Molesley did not hide his frustration.

“It was bad afternoon for us and we’re very disappointed,” said Molesley.

“In the last two weeks we felt we were building and had taken a couple of steps forward but this was definitely a step back.

“We’ve set standards here and we didn’t quite reach them. We’re bitterly disappointed and we came up short.

“We started slowly and we needed to react more positive to the penalty.

“But we played on the back foot not the front foot which is not the way we want to play.

“We struggled to get going but it was a game of few chances and we can’t shoot ourselves in the foot by giving away soft goals like that.

“We didn’t really create too much either and it’s disappointing because we were all excited going into this game.”