Abit of a **** day really. A loss, out the cup, some key players having to play 120 mins and Alese looking like he's facing yet another long layoff.
That is the biggest issue we have, we'd be comfortably top of the league if we took even half of our chances. Concentrate on the league.
He looked like a lad who's never played in 6 months to be fair to him. He's a bit rusty and needs to be eased in slowly.
Don't think we can call it a patched up team, minutes in legs for them that needed it. No gripes about the result as I'm not bothered about the cup.
Maybe RLB doesn’t make subs because he knows they will need to be a lot fitter in the prem so they had better get fitter or be shipped.
Decent performance at times, poor defensive errors cost us, but between players not used to playing together so not totally surprising. Hjelde and Aouchiche were the pick of the players, Aleksic did himself no harm when he came on. Jones and Johnson need to go and get a good loan now to make their careers. On to watch Matty Young now.
Not the end of the world, would rather it was done in 90 minutes though. Some decent individual performances. Aouchiche, Jones, Hjelde, Aleksic, Mayenda I thought were decent. We have some poor squad players mind and i'm not surprised RLB doesn't trust them. Connolly isn't good enough for us in my opinion, if he could be moved on I would do it. Rusyn anonymous after coming on, another who should be gone soon. Not his fault but Alese is a bit of a problem now, especially considering Cirkin is also a bit injury prone. Thought Neil, Hume, O'Nien and Rigg as the first 11 players in the team today were poor. Fundamentally disagree with Neil playing 120 minutes mind. We have a huge game on Friday night and we clearly didn't care about today considering we brought on Johnson instead of Mepham and left Isidor on the bench for Rusyn and Ogunsuyi. Mistake in my opinion. Less games for us now ain't a bad thing.
Two sloppy pieces of play was the difference, we still had chances to win that but now it's time to concentrate on getting promotion
Couldn’t care less about the cup tbh anyway. Worrying for Stoke fans that they could only beat us with their fully string XI with two gifted goals
Good summary. Neil was dead after a few mins in the first half of extra time. Amazed he played the lot. No surprise he was slow to react to their goal.
Not a bad day all in. Shame we lost, I think a cup run may have been a chance to keep some players involved. That said, nice to see two academy debuts. Murty and co deserve a handy bonus. Good to see Samed at last. Looked ok having said he hasnt played in 6 months. Downside the AA injury. Hoping it isnt too bad, or we may need to find a left back.
Not too disappointed we're out of the cup, but disappointed with Samed's debut. Fair enough he's been out a while but looked way off the pace when he came on. Alecsic disappeared after his goal, Neil was poor and Connelly - the less said the better.
Lets not dress it up. Disappointing day. Thankfully Le Fee signed yesterday, Weve done nothing yet to think we can pick and choose when we turn up. If not interested in FA Cup then why enter. Stoke are an average team and we should be beating them, RLB as manager why do team continue to start poor, quite often conceding a shocking goal. 09 under pressure is an accident waiting to happen. A few young players got a run out which is a positive for them and others got some minutes. If today was about protecting players why allow our skipper Dan to play a full 120 mins. I would of thought he is one of the most important players going forward. AA & Mayenda continue to look good but are wasteful in front of goal, aleksic finished well but will he play much going forward. Connolly & Rusyn will probably move on soon. Abdul Samed looked neat and tidy but ultimately cost us the game with a shocking overly casual pass to an already tiring backline. If it was one of the regulars they would be getting called out. Never underestimate the momentum an FA cup run brings the whole city. Another option would be, play your best team, go 2 up and start taking players off after 60 minutes. Half the team never played today meaning it will be 14 days since their last game when they played Burnley, I think 60 mins today would of done them better. Exciting times ahead, lets go for it and try to win every game, We have the players to do so.
I think the game shows how strong the spine of the team is Mepham-Jobe-Isidor. I can understand why they didn't play but we missed them today I can see why RLB hasn't been using Connelly as a sub, too slow for how we want to play. 2 complete brain farts cost us that game so we're not too bad long term.
