Nottingham Forest boss Steve Cooper surveyed the wreckage of a humbling 4-1 FA Cup defeat against Championship strugglers Blackpool admitting: “My players fell well, well short.”
Cooper paid the ultimate price for making 11 changes from the side that had beaten Southampton in midweek.
But Cooper who will have to lift his shaken troops for a Carabao Cup quarter-final against Wolves on Wednesday night insisted: “For their goalkeeper to keep the ball out of the net there should have been some world class saves but we didn’t even get the ball on target and for me that’s as disappointing as the goals we have conceded.
“I don’t take any consolation that we created plenty of chances, we should be scoring from them. At the level we are playing at is a leap ahead of the Championship and I say that respectfully because we were there last season.
“It’s not about creating chances it’s about taking them. Some of my players fell short and that can happen. Yes, some of them fell really short and that’s the crux of it all really.
“I hope this result doesn’t linger. It was though a real reminder of what not to do compared to what we have done in recent weeks.
"I’m pleased we’ve got a midweek game because we have got to get out there playing.”
Delighted Seasiders boss Michael Appleton who had been absent from training in the build up to this third round clash due to “a family matter” said: “I would have taken any positive result never mind 4-1. We have done alright in the last five games since the World Cup break putting some teams under the cosh. We just haven’t been clinical enough, we haven’t been putting our chances away.
“The second goal in a game like this was always going to be big because of the quality they have got. For us to get the second goal was a bit of relief. You could see the confidence flooding through the players after that.
“The lads have had a right go and put in a shift as they have in other games. You could see the relief and it freed them up a bit.”
Blackpool is awash with FA Cup nostalgia with the likes of Stanley Matthews and Stan Mortensen treading the boards here.
Appleton added: “The FA Cup is special. That’s been the case everywhere I’ve been, certainly in recent years, in terms of my spells at Lincoln and Oxford, especially at Oxford where we had two or three really good Cup runs. I think it does wonders for a football club going on an FA Cup run.
“We will be looking to do that here if we can. It creates a bit of momentum and from a confidence point of view it should do the players a power of good.”
