It was a tough night for us, there’s no dressing that up.
Losing 5–0 at home is never acceptable, and I don’t think there’s anyone — players or staff — who can walk away from that game happy with what we produced.
The early sending off obviously didn’t help us.
Going down to 10 men so early against a side that wants to dominate possession makes the task extremely difficult.
But I’m not going to sit here and blame the referee.
Those decisions are made, and whether you agree with them or not, you have to get on with it.
What disappointed me more was what came after.
Even with 10 men, there were still moments in that first half where I thought we were good.
We got into their penalty area, we created half chances, and at 2–0 down at half-time, I genuinely felt we were still in the game if we stayed disciplined and executed what we spoke about.
But if I’m being honest, we didn’t do that in the second half.
At this level, men’s football demands discipline.
It demands that you follow instructions, especially in difficult moments.
As the game wore on, I felt we lost that.
We lost our shape, we got stretched, and we stopped doing the basics well.
And when you do that, you get punished — and we were.
There will always be moments in a game people want to pick apart.
A clearance here, a decision there, a goalkeeper coming off his line.
But football is a collective.
We don’t single people out.
We win together and we lose together, and this one is on all of us.
I actually thought at half-time we had handled the setback of going down to 10 men relatively well from a mental point of view.
But in the second half, we didn’t cope nearly as well, and that’s something we need to address.
There were also moments that could have gone our way — a potential penalty, for example — but again, you can’t hang your hat on those things.
You have to look at yourselves first, and we weren’t good enough.
Up front, it was always going to be a thankless task once we went a man down.
I thought the two forward boys worked, they tried, but collectively we needed to be smarter in how we managed the game.
After the final whistle, there were some honest conversations.
That stays within the group, but I will say this — there are lessons in a performance like that, and it’s up to us to take them.
The fixtures haven’t been kind, with two games in three days, but every team goes through that at some point in the season.
We won’t use it as an excuse. What matters now is the response.
Football isn’t linear. You don’t just keep improving every week without setbacks.
Nights like this happen. The challenge for this group is how we bounce back.
We’ve got another home game next Friday night, and that gives us an opportunity to respond the right way.
Some of the boys will get minutes in the U23s, we’ll reset, and we’ll go again.
I expect a reaction — and I think this group will deliver one.
