King's Lynn Town boss apologises after FA Trophy exit at Stourbridge

Adam Lakeland apologised to the travelling King’s Lynn Town supporters who saw his team bow out of the FA Trophy.

It was a case of after the Lord Mayor’s show as Lynn followed up their stunning midweek win over National League North leaders Scunthorpe, with a performance Lakeland admitted was below par.

Lynn were 2-0 down in their second round clash before Josh Coulson came off the bench and pulled one back – too little, too late

“It‘s incredibly frustrating,” said the Linnets boss.

“This game was always going to be a difficult one for us. It's a real tough place to come, and your attitude and mentality and application and willingness to fight and scrap and grind out a result all need to be in play. Unfortunately, we've just not managed to do that today. We conceded a poor first goal, the second goal the referee has got to give us a foul, and obviously doesn't.

“And then from 2-0 down it's incredibly difficult. We pushed in the last 15 minutes, managed to get a goal and create two massive chances at 2-1 in the latter stages and the keeper’s made two big saves, but all in all I'm disappointed with the performance today and can't really have too many complaints.”

Lynn’s interest in KO competitions is now over for the season, but while they can now concentrate on moving away from the clutches of the relegation zone, Lakeland refused to take any positive from the trip.

“We want to win games of football,” he said. “We want to win every game of football that we play in. Obviously the team got dumped out of the FA Cup really early on and we really wanted to have a decent run in this for ourselves and for the supporters and for us to put in a below par performance today and exit it, I'm incredibly disappointed and the players are well aware of that and I can only apologise to the supporters who've made a long trip and supported us.

“There were too many today who were off it and for me that's something that we need to look - attitude. and preparation and mentality are massive things in football and today too many individuals were out-fought by their opponents and that's something that we need to look at going forward.”

Stourbridge: Price, Flint, Wilson, Prosser, Kettle, Portman, Dowd (Knights 81), King, Benbow, Fletcher, Daniels. Subs not used: Walters, Solly, Bavanganga, Steward. Goals: Daniels 57, Prosser 66.

King’s Lynn Town: P Jones, Crowther, McFadden, Oke (Smith 60), Ronan, B Jones (Coulson 75), Hargreaves, Morrison, Stephens (Fatadjo 75), Rogers, Cybulski. Subs not used: Isaacson, Key. Goal: Coulson 85.