A feature of last season, and one of the main reasons why it ended up being so successful, was the squad’s ability to react to disappointments as they dealt with setbacks by getting straight back at it with barely a bump in the road.
“What we did as a group was make sure that we responded in the right way, and that’s the top and bottom of it,” he explained. “Whoever is selected to go out at Oxford at the weekend, they have to perform.
“They’ve got to go out there and do things properly, do things in the right way, and get us going again.
“Reaction or not, going out on Tuesday is a massive disappointment because I genuinely wanted to be in the second round. I really wanted to see a good performance.
“Even if you don’t get a performance, at least find a way to win. We’re all in it together, and as a group we haven’t done enough.
“It wasn’t through a lack of preparation, it wasn’t through a lack of wanting to be successful. It just didn’t happen.
“I thought we did a lot of decent stuff but unfortunately you get judged in the final third. If you don’t do both boxes properly, you aren’t going to be successful.
“I thought we defended well over the times, and we’ve just got to go again now and get ourselves ready for another big challenge at the weekend.”
On how the players reacted after the game, he told us: “Things get said but there’s not much you can do, you can’t change it. You can’t do anything about it.
“We wanted a reaction before the game, we wanted people to react and go out and perform during it. That’s not reacting because they’ve been poor, that’s reacting to play well when they’re out there.
“Like I say, we’ve just got to go again now. We’ve got to dust ourselves down, see how everybody is and go from there.
“We’ll do the same preparation, we don’t need to change anything, we’ve had one league game and one cup game. I thought it was a really good game at the weekend where we showed some really good stuff.
“Tuesday wasn’t any good but it’s not the end of the world. It’s really disappointing and I feel for those supporters who made the journey. We now got to Oxford and hopefully we do ourselves justice there.”
“For me it’s about how we take care of the ball,” he continued. “You can do all of your running, but when you get to that moment and you’ve got to find the final pass, that’s where there has to be a really clear mind and a real focus to make sure that’s right.
“That’s where we have to improve. Everybody knows we’re not a team that’s laden with 15-20 goal a season strikers, or any players who are going to do it, so when we get our opportunities we have to make them count.
“We have players who are now getting up to speed who will help with creativity. I thought Danny Butterworth and Sean Maguire had good energy about them on Tuesday.
“They have pace, and we’re just having to manage them to get them fit without pushing them too hard.
“It’s important they’re fit for the season, not just the first few weeks. We’re working on it. We’re trying to get them up to speed as quickly as we possibly can.”