IT was a big disappointment to go out of the FA Cup on Saturday.
After looking at the DVD of the game, I don’t believe that we played that badly.
The goals were poor from our point of view but from Yeovil’s perspective they were very good strikes.
We worked very hard again and the players tried to do what we asked of them in the second half by getting into their box a lot.
It didn’t quite fall for us but we did not move and work the ball as we had in previous weeks.
After looking at the game again, it emphasised how much we missed Tom Barkhuizen and Steve Leslie and underlined how important they have been for us in recent weeks.
Going out of the cup at this stage will have an impact on our finances.
Last year, we had a great run to the fourth round and made some good financial reward for the club out of it.
But that does not happen every year and there are always ups and downs in the FA Cup.
We should not forget that we have, after all, been beaten by a club from a division above ours and one which has been in League 1 for a number of years.
It is not as though we have been beaten by someone worse than we are.
You just don’t get an FA Cup run every year but this season we had the trip to Villa Park, which no-one expected, so that gave us a bit of a boost financially.
We have a number of players on the books at the moment but that’s largely because the players who are arriving are coming in for next to nothing.
I know it is the expectation that we are paying out a lot of money for these players but, actually, we can currently put out nine players for what we were paying Janos Kovacs.
That is the situation that the club is in; we have a small budget which does not allow us to go out and make big-money signings.
We are trying to work with these young players and develop them to make them better players and fit into what we are trying to do in the hope that, maybe, one or two of them will be sold for decent money.
We are a development club; one which has go to look to sell players on to help balance the books. As coaching staff, we have to make sure that we progress any players who come in here and so we have to work a lot harder on that side of things to ensure that goal is achieved.
While we are, of course, disappointed to go out of the cup, our main objectives this year are to stay in the league, consolidate, make sure that we can balance the books and progress one or more of our young players into moving up the ladder.
So with that in mind, we have to make sure that we maintain our momentum in the league, starting on Saturday against Burton Albion.
To do that, the players have got to work hard during the week and we have got to work hard with them to ensure that everyone is well prepared.
Burton have been a bit of a bogy side for us in the past but this is a new season and that all goes out of the window.
It is vitally important that we get back to winning ways and continue to try to get those points on the board.
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