An angry and frustrated Ian Allinson has questioned the application and desire of his St Albans City’s players after a disappointingly limp performance saw them exit the FA Trophy.

He has talked about moving some on in the past and even did so at the beginning of September but Saints, who are now on a run of six games without a win, looked toothless and totally devoid of passion as they lost 2-0 to Southern League Weymouth on Tuesday night.

And there was the distinct impression that Allinson had come to the end of his tether with a good few of his squad.

He said: “I struggle to understand why we reach a level of consistency in some games and then go off the boil like we are now.

“We put ourselves into a position where we could progress but you have to earn the right to win this competition and we didn’t earn that right.

“The first person I look at is myself and what I have to do to get us back on track and there’s a lot to be done.

“But the players need to look at themselves because the application from one or two of these players over the last few weeks has not been good enough.

“It’s down to me now. I’ve got to try and bring some personnel in and make some big decisions about who we want to keep.

“We need an application from the players that shows they want to be at the football club.

“I’ve just said to them all there, if you don’t want to be here, tell me and we’ll move them on and bring others in.

“I saw too many players going through the motions tonight and that wasn’t good enough and I need more players who want to be at the football club.

“We might have to look at one or two who will want to run through brick walls for us.”

And when asked whether his players understand the need for a far-more dynamic performance, the bitterly-disappointed boss’s response was less than complimentary to his squad.

“You can’t teach people desire,” said an exasperated Allinson. “You can ask them to do it and the frustration for me is that when we played the likes of Welling and Slough and Dartford we had players who wanted to do that.

“You want to keep a squad together and you want them to play well together but perhaps we haven’t got a big enough squad.

“Perhaps everyone thinks they know they are going to play every week and perhaps I have to look at that side of it and maybe get an 18 or 19-man squad and put people under pressure.

“Certainly at the moment the players don’t feel they are under pressure for their places and the only way I can do that is to get replacements for them.

“We did that after the defeat to Billericay and it freshened up and we went on a good run.

“We are going to have to freshen it up again before we go into the Christmas period because that is going to be a really tough period for us.”

That lack of a big squad was evident on Tuesday with City naming just 15 although one of them, Clovis Kamdjo, was still injured and never likely to play.

Tom Bender also picked up a worrying knock and was heading off to hospital for an x-ray at the conclusion of the game

But his final word was for the supporters.

He said: “We’ve got good support here and they are an honest bunch who pay good money and we haven’t given them a return on their money.

“That’s sad. We have to be better than that.

“It’s OK looking great on the eye and passing the ball for fun but we lost a game of football because we didn’t go and penetrate, we didn’t win enough second balls, we didn’t make extra runs and in the second half our shape was all over the place.”