Sheffield United assistant manager Stuart McCall said he was bored watching his side’s Carabao Cup defeat to League One Lincoln.
The Premier League side suffered a 3-2 penalty shoot-out loss at Bramall Lane after a drab 90 minutes ended goalless.
Defeat continued a poor start to the season for the Blades, who have lost their opening three Premier League games.
They made nine changes for this match, but McCall said none of those players who came in pushed their case.
“A poor flat performance has given us a poor result, there’s no getting away from it,” he said.
“Credit to Lincoln, they made it difficult to play against, but we never moved the ball quick enough and got into areas we wanted to.
“If I’m being honest, we were bored ourselves watching it, we needed more impetus. We didn’t do enough to win the game. It seemed quite flat.
“We have to move on to a huge game on Saturday against Everton.
“There’s no excuses, the side we put out there should perform better. Take nothing away from Lincoln but we were pretty dull.
“We were desperate to win tonight and we put a team out that we believed we could do that.
“We were just boring really, we had no thrust. That is not what we want to be at Bramall Lane. Hugely disappointing throughout the night from start to finish. We can’t afford many of them.”
Lincoln were worthy of victory, which came after Lukas Jensen saved spot-kicks from Louis Marsh and Benie Traore to send his side through.
Boss Mark Kennedy was in philosophical mood after a first victory at Bramall Lane in 40 years.
“There’s only two things human beings fear when they’re born, that’s noise, and falling,” he said. “All the other fear some idiot puts in your head. There’s nothing to fear but fear itself.
“So go and embrace the moment, go and enjoy the day.
“And it’s nights like this that me personally and the players…live for. That’s what you get up for in the morning, win, lose or draw.
“You want to get your head out there, stick your chest out and sometimes you win and the rewards are incredible, the highs are high, the lows are so low, but for me that’s what you get up for, that’s what I come to work for every day.”
