North End boss Alex Neil reflected on today’s game to iFollowPNE and was in no mood to make any excuses after North End were knocked out of the FA Cup.
The manager told iFollowPNE that the result reflected the game at times this afternoon and felt his side were heavily off the pace as they were beaten 3-1 against Doncaster Rovers.
“I don’t think we played well enough on the ball and I don’t think we defended well enough” assessed the manager after the game.
“These are always difficult games to reflect on immediately after the game when you’ve lost a game against a lower league opposition in the cup so it’s always naturally disappointing.
“We’re a bit embarrassed about how we performed because it wasn't good enough today.
“If I’m looking at it over the course of the game there was one time when we got a grip of the game early in the second half, but then we concede a free kick, we don't deal with it properly and it ends up in the back of the net.
“We give away one free kick, they get the ball in the box and we don’t deal with it properly and then the result is it ends up in the back of the net.
“I’m not going to sit here and make excuses for the performance. I take full responsibility for the performance and for the defeat and we know we need to improve.
“We’ve got players coming back and I said to the lads that although we’ve performed well recently, we’ve not got enough points so naturally when the lads do come back, there are decisions to be made.”
Today’s game marked North End’s sixth in just over two weeks following the hectic Christmas schedule, and coupled with the amount of players on the injury list, the manager admitted that fatigue may have played a part in today’s defeat.
He added: “A lot of the lads in the team haven’t had a lot of minutes at certain stages of the season and we’ve asked them to go for four matches and to be fair the three matches prior to today, although we didn’t get the best results in them games I thought they performed well in them games - but today I can’t say that; I thought we were poor today.
“When you accumulate all of those games, (fatigue) was always going to catch up on us.”
Watch iFollowPNE for the full verdict from Alex Neil following today’s defeat.