Ange Postecoglou's reaction
Obviously we’re disappointed we don’t progress. It wasn’t a great start, it’s the last thing you want, and for the first 45 minutes we struggled to get some control. In the second half we got a better grip of the game, we were more like ourselves, but unfortunately we fell short.
[What now?] Nothing really changes. We’ve got a couple of weeks now without a midweek game. This group of players have done an unbelievable job for the past two and a half months. Unbelievable job. I can’t praise them highly enough for the effort they’ve put in.
We’ve had a small group of players playing twice a week since the middle of November. They’ll get an opportunity to recover now and we’ll some players back now in the next couple of weeks. We’ll look forward to resetting and finish the season strongly.
The [fit] players have given everything they can but it takes its toll on them, of course it does. We had 11 first-team players out today. Take that out of any team for one game and they’ll struggle; we’ve done it for two and a half months. We’ll get some players back and I think they’ll help.
