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Cup Win at Rugby 'Faultless' Says Attenborough

Cup Win at Rugby 'Faultless' Says Attenborough

Nigel Oldrini

Chris Nelson spoke to Lee Attenborough following Belper's convincing F A Cup victory over Rugby Town

CN: Lee, cruising through to the first qualifying round of the FA Cup today, you must be absolutely delighted with an almost faultless performance.

LA: Yes, literally it was faultless. First half especially, we had that ruthlessness in the first half where we took our chances and again, just completely one-sided game from 1-90.

Probably dropped off a little bit in the second half because there was a bit more game management in there once you're 3-0 up. The only disappointment I've got is we maybe started to overplay a little bit. It's all right to keep the ball and whatever, but once you've invited them on, you've got to put it in good areas and keep stretching them and going the other way.

So that's the only little bit to tweak, but we prefer to learn when we win and I actually think we had more chances in the second half than we did in the first half. We scored three in the first, one in the second, so if we'd tidied up second half, that could have been, without being disrespectful, that could have been seven or eight.

But I've said that most games and that's now five matches this season and, in my opinion, five really good performances. We want a professional job out of the lads and, listen, I've been managing 13 years at this level.

I've seen these games; the FA Cup always comes in that first or second week and I've seen the level drop so many times where you're not quite at it against teams in the lead below or whatever. Maybe I'd see it as a bit of a week off almost, but today the message was it's anything but that and we've not won enough games to warrant going half-tilt somewhere.

We've got to go and put our foot down and I thought we did that really well. We imposed ourselves on the game and I think other than being robbed of a clean sheet, and I'll say no more obvious reasons why, but anyone on the ground knows what I'm talking about. We should have had a clean sheet, and they stuck the penalty away, but almost faultless, like you say.

CN: As you say, the penalty, which you probably can't say too much about, but should never really have been given, means that realistically we should have had another clean sheet today. You're starting to get some real selection headaches in that defence.

LA: Yes, but again, it's about people doing jobs and I've said to the players, obviously we've had one leave this week, but people want to come to Belper because they expect us to be up and around it, but then they don't want competition for the shirt.

You can't have it both ways. If you don't want any competition, don't play at Step 4 at a good club and that's not a dig at Tristan. It's anybody who is here has to understand that we've got good players and we've got depth in the team.

Then you see Jack Rogers today left on the bench again. He'll be disappointed not to start, but he comes on for half an hour. He gives it everything he's got.

He impacts the game. He nearly scores, does really well and the same with Lewis today. He comes on, impacts the game, driving forward, making things happen and that's the attitude we want, and we need and it's all we'll accept really, if we're being honest.

So, yes, headaches in the back four, but good headaches and whoever plays, they have to understand they're all important. My job's really difficult and sometimes it's a lonely place as a manager, especially when you lose because you see disappointed faces around the place, but it's a long old season.

We're probably going to play fifty games this year in all comps, plenty of time for everybody, but at the end of the day, the starting eleven that we're picking are performing.

The subs coming on are impacting games. We can't ask for much more than that at this stage, but like I said on Tuesday night, just gone. Hopefully, this is just the start of our season and it's another good win today, but it's nothing to get carried away about and then we go again on Tuesday, and we try and do exactly the same and dominate the ball and win another game.

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