Coventry Sphinx manager Luke Hopkins felt that it was a case of too little too late as his side went down to a 3-1 defeat at Heath Hayes on Saturday.
Hopkins told the Sphinx website: “it was a dreadful game.
“The lads love the praise they receive in the papers and on the internet when we have won and a classic example was on Tuesday morning after Monday’s win over Shepshed, there was a buzz from a big performance at home in front of a big crowd, but to do well in the league you also need to win away from home, in front of 20 people and still win even if you don’t play well.
“I’m not going to name names but we had a game plan, we didn’t play to it. It’s irrelevant, thinking was it the right game plan for that team on their pitch afterwards, we didn’t play as asked.
“If we had lost then me and my management would say we got it wrong which we may have anyway, but the players need to follow the instructions and it shows when we don’t we get found out, when people want to play their own way, it pulls the team apart as no one is driving the direction.
“We picked up another injury to Gio Dainty early in the first twenty minutes, but the lads on the pitch were lucky that we only had two subs left to make, otherwise the large majority would have found themselves sitting next to me. It was simply not good enough and the players need to learn to be motivated to win whatever way and need to ask themselves are they winners?. We had all the answers at half time and then to concede 5 minutes into the first half, it was never going to be easy.
“At 3-0 down, we pulled one back through an Aden Moore free kick, which was a nice strike and two minutes later had one ruled out for an offside, very tight though, if he was offside at all. The little flurry towards the last ten minutes was too little too late.
“Looking to Pelsall Villa in the FA Vase on Saturday. it will be a hard tough week to put it right. It’s a must win game for the club as well as a bounce back game for the team.”