Carlisle United crashed out of the FA Youth Cup last night, beaten 5-1 at home by a sharp Barnsley side.
Yet it had all started well for the young Blues with the opening goal from Aran Fitzpatrick from a superbly struck free-kick five yards outside the area.
But Barnsley levelled after 37 minutes and within 15 minutes of the second-half had taken the game away from the home side.
There was a minute of applause ahead of kick-off, in memory of Dave Wilkes, a man who had both clubs close to his heart.
United youth team boss, addressing the club website acknowledged the quality in the Barnsley side.
“They’re high up in their league this season, they won it last season, and that doesn’t happen for no reason.
“We wanted to frustrate them and see if we could catch them when we had our moments, which we did. The lads were full of it at the start of the game and that’s what got us ahead.
“Unfortunately we’ve seen again that we’ve got to be better at overcoming disappointments. When they got their equaliser you could see our lads were deflated, and that’s when they started to lack belief.
“The fact is we can’t defend like we did in the second half. And I’m not just talking about the defenders, I’m talking about all over the pitch.
“We had people not taking up positions early enough and giving options off the ball, people not moving in relation to the ball, people switching off and allowing players to run off them, and we had 15 minutes where I have to say we were lucky not to concede more than the three goals we conceded.
“To be fair to Barnsley they smelled blood and they went for us. We were on our knees as soon as the first goal after the break went in.
“It’s a lesson that our lads have got to learn quickly because this sort of thing has happened far too often this season. When they concede the floodgates can open and it’s finding the resilience to stop that from being the case.
““I hate losing, but we’ve got to be realistic within the disappointment that we are where we are as a team and we have to look to work out why these situations happen. If we can start to focus in on that we can then ask if we can improve on it.
“This one has gone, we now have to improve on it and get back to the business of winning games. If we can show that we can identify mistakes, and learn from them, that will be a big positive to come out of what has been a really frustrating 45 minutes of football.
“We’ll keep working, we’ll get there, so that we’re making fewer of the mistakes that we’re seeing at the moment.”
There was a minute of applause ahead of kick-off, in memory of Dave Wilkes, a man who had both clubs close to his heart.
