A disappointed Ian Allinson felt a few of the demons of the past few weeks returned as St Albans City crashed out of the Herts Senior Cup on penalties to Hertford Town.
The Saints manager was pleased with the way his side had fought back from 2-0 down to take the match to penalties but ultimately he believed this was a big chance missed to win some silverware.
He has already spoken this year of the need for his young side to learn how to manage games better and revealed after the game at Hertingfordbury Park on Tuesday night the team believed they hadn’t done that.
He said: “We felt we took too long to get the ball forward, we went side to side too much but full credit to Hertford. They got a lot of bodies behind the ball, they didn’t leave a lot of space behind and they made it difficult for us.
“But we still had seven or eight good chances.
“It was only the last 15 minutes when we went 2-0 down did we start hitting the target.
“[Prior to that] we have got into four or five good positions and not made their keeper make a save and the frustrating thing for me is they have had two shots and scored from them.
“Teams don’t have to work hard to create chances against us whereas we have to work extremely hard and play some wonderful football to score a goal.
“I was really pleased with the way we came back from 2-0 down.
“We could have quite easily thrown in the towel but we didn’t and at times we played some really good stuff but at other times we played too much stuff in the wrong areas.”
He also felt the penalty exit could possibly have been avoided too.
“When we get to penalties we’ve got to keep composure,” he said.
“We’ve lost to Hitchin already this year [on penalties] and now we’ve lost to Hertford.
“I know it’s a bit of a lottery when it gets there but we should be better than that.
“I feel we should be scoring our five, unless the keeper makes an excellent save.
“Harold’s [Joseph] and Ben’s [Herd] penalties weren’t good enough.”
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