Derby County Head Coach Paul Warne admitted his side 'weren't good enough in the important moments of the game' in their Emirates FA Cup First Round replay defeat to Crewe Alexandra on Tuesday night.
Derby went down 3-1 against the Sky Bet League Two promotion chasers at Pride Park Stadium, despite taking the lead early on through winger Tom Barkhuizen's second goal of the season, and Warne was incredibly disappointed with the overall performance.
Speaking to RamsTV after the final whistle, Warne gave his verdict on the performance.
On the result itself...
As I've said on numerous occasions to the group, if you're not at your best then any team can beat you.We started the game quite well and it may sound weird, but we maybe scored too early and we thought it would be a nice easy evening for us.
Ironically, we played better away from home in the First Round tie than we did at home tonight and we've been really good at Pride Park recently.
We didn't create enough goalscoring opportunities and even with half an hour to go if felt like we were just rushing things and crossing the ball into the box from anywhere.
You have to play with a bit of character and push your chest out and I felt like we lacked a little bit of character tonight.
On not capitalising on scoring first....
I'm frustrated about not winning first and foremost. I wanted a cup run, I know the benefits of one. Even at 2-1 down, I thought we had ages to get back into it and it's frustrating. We put some unbelievable set-pieces in and in tight games a set-piece can win it.
I've never said ever that we're totally there and have cracked it and nights like tonight make you realise that.
When we come back after the international break next weekend we need to hit the ground running because that level of performance isn't enough to pick up points in League One.
On not building on Saturday's 3-0 win over Barnsley...
I warned the team about turning up tonight and thinking it would be an easy game. There's no easy matches and we were 2-0 down at Crewe in the initial tie.
To win four games at home on the spin in different competitions is good and it builds confidence and the lads feel good about themselves, so it's disappointing to go into the international break on the back of a defeat.
We've let a lot of people down with the level of performance tonight but we'll pick the lads up and train hard and get ready for the Bristol Rovers game here next weekend.
If we're honest, we got what we deserved tonight which was very little. In the important moments of the game, we weren't good enough.
