Head Coach Simon Rusk praised his team’s fighting spirit after they came from 2-0 down only to lose to an injury-time goal in their EFL Trophy opener at Leyton Orient on Tuesday.
Substitute Ben Wilson scored twice in the last five minutes but Orient grabbed a last-gasp winner moments after they had missed a penalty.
Rusk said, “I thought it was a good test. We had lots of decent play, but we couldn’t put their goal under enough pressure in the first half.
“We knew we were going to come up against a team with a bit of physicality but that’s what these games are about – the importance of what we do in both boxes will be what we learn from last night. A bit of naivety was probably the difference in the game. But there are far more positives than there are negatives for us, overall it was a good start.”
The fact that his players recovered from a two-goal deficit showed a lot about their character, according to their coach.
“We spoke about it in the team talk before that there’s lots of good players in the group, but we’ve got plenty of character to go with it,” added Rusk. “At 2-0 down, we didn’t cave in against an experienced team and we can take plenty of positives from that.
“It was nice to get two goals and get back in the game. It was probably not a free-kick at the end when they scored their third but we should have seen the danger out so it was a bit of a cruel blow.
“But for large aspects of the game we were the better team, it was just that finishing touch in the first 70 minutes that wasn’t quite there. In these competitions, goals change the momentum but it was really pleasing to find a way back from 2-0 down.
“The boys never stopped trying to do the right thing and I can’t really ask much more than that. We will learn from last night and the goals we conceded and try and make it better. Hopefully we can use it as a platform to build on.”
The under-23s now enter a busy spell of fixtures with seven games in three weeks.
Rusk added, “It’s going to be a challenging time for us and the boys are going to have to be quite robust over this period, they have to look after themselves and prepare like a professional as we would expect.”