Defeat at Brentwood Town ended Welling United’s FA Trophy hopes. After the game, Rod Stringer shared his views.

“First of all, I want to apologise to the supporters because that was probably one of the worst performances I’ve seen from a non-league club.” he said.

“The three goals that we conceded were absolute shockers. I don’t want to make loads of excuses but we’ve had a lot that couldn’t play today. I think that that showed, t think that the midfield having the likes of Luke Allen and Jack Thomas and people like that (missing).”

“(We’ve got) loads of work to do. To be honest, I think the best thing for us is that we’ve got a week spare now, we’ve been going Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday. I knew this game was coming because I’ve seen what we’ve got.”

“I’ve just told them in there my honest opinions. I haven’t gone mad because I don’t see the point but I just said to them a lot of you are not good enough for this league, and it’s as simple as that. And if you are good enough for this level, do you want to play for this football club?”

“I back the supporters for what they were saying and the disappointment but not the personal side of it. You can’t get personal with anybody. Collectively, they’ve paid their money and come and watched that.”

Despite playing badly, Welling still had opportunities which also frustrated the manager.

“Even the amount of chances we missed. As poor as we were, the number of chances that we missed is really, really alarming, really alarming and then what killed the game is on the other side that the goals that we conceded were so poor. Schoolboy errors. Sunday morning.”

“My missus came and watched us today and she doesn’t normally watch football but I bet that she says when we get home ‘you’re lot was absolutely awful’ and that is the truth.”

“So what I’ll be looking to do is now, the way forward, is I need to have a heart to heart with some of them. Some of them are here for the wrong reasons. I just said to them in there ‘We need to have a chat.’ I need to go through pretty much most of the players who we’ve got available.”

“Know the ones that want to be on the journey, know the ones that are fighting for our lives and want to battle and do the basics of football, run hard, work hard, go up against your man, play in the right areas, defend for your life, try and score goals, all of that is what I need as a mixture of players and today all you can see at the minute is a load of individuals out there that only really wanted to do what they wanted to do.”

He continued: “There was no execution, there was no aggression, it was like playing in a keep ball session at training. I said to them in there I think we’ve probably missed seven or eight chances. I wouldn’t say we played well but we created them because I didn’t think Brentwood were as good as I thought they would be.”

“I watched them the other week against Dartford and I thought that they were a lot better than they were today. I thought they gave the ball away a helluva lot and we didn’t punish them for it. A good team would have punished them today but credit to Brentwood and good luck in the next round.”

“What I’ve see today is two teams, one’s at the top and one’s at the bottom, and there wasn’t loads of difference in them but we’ve created three problems that have all ended in the back of our net.”

“The defending was awful so we certainly need to bring in three or four players, still, players that have played at this level and want to come and play for the club and try and help push us up the league.”

“It’s not easy at this time of the year because everyone wants to try and get certain players in, in certain positions so we’ve got to try and work as hard as we can this week as I have done since I came in, but this has been a bit of a problem as well, the Trophy, because we’ve now gone out of three competitions and I’ll be honest and truthful, as much as I don’t like saying it, we’ve got bigger things to worry about than the Kent Senior Cup, the London Senior Cup and the Trophy.”

“The Trophy for me, it’s nice to have a run in it, you get a few quid on the way, but when you’re trying to sign players and things like that, it’s really tough.”

“Today, we had so many missing. Obviously (Greg) Cundle was missing because of his injury but we’ve got so many that couldn’t play today that would definitely have given us part of the game that we were missing.”

“I know that two of the players would have given us a lot more than that. This is a rebuilding process at the end of October. That shouldn’t be the case. Some of the players in there, that have been with us a while since pre-season, if it wasn’t the club you wanted to sign for then let’s have a sit down and let’s go on because one of those players there today, and I won’t name names, but his attitude (was) absolutely abysmal.”

“When you lose games of football. If we get beaten by good teams I’ll be the first to stand here and say they were better than us. I’m seeing that what we’ve got here at the minute, it doesn’t take a good team to beat us and I think that’s where the players attitudes and just the mixture of the balance is toxic. I don’t like it.”

“I think you’ve got a few that think they are better than what they are. We hear little bits on the bench and things like that. There was something that I was told today from one of the players and I thought; Really? Well, you can find another club as far as I’m concerned because we’re not going to win cup ties, we’re not going to win games of football when you’ve got players saying certain things in the game.”

“We don’t need it, it doesn’t help the cause. We need to find some good players in the right areas, I won’t say what they are, and I just think then we will need to galvanise ourselves, give ourselves an identity because we haven’t got an identity, we need to try and find a system that will work with the players that we’ve got and then hopefully we can try and have a battle. If you don’t have a battle you can’t win a war.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.