Steve Morison gave an honest assessment following his side’s heavy defeat to Fulham U21 in the National League Cup, and was the first to offer an apology to the supporters.
Heading into the second ever edition of the competition, fresh off reaching the final last term, Sutton will have hoped to get off to a better start this time round than they did, falling to a hefty 7-0 defeat to Premier League 2 side Fulham courtesy of a hat-trick from Aaron Loupalo-Bi, a brace from Tom Olyott, along with further goals from Terrell Works and Macauley Zepa.
“They battered us” said the Head Coach. “A couple of moments in the first half, we scored, it was onside, but the second half was an embarrassment. I’m really lost for words to be honest and I’m not really often lost for words. I’m not a massive talker, but that was embarrassing.”
“The only thing that’s done is made my job really easy in terms of picking a team for Saturday, so I suppose I just have to apologise for the 800-odd that turned up and anyone who’s watched it on TV. Apologise for that because I’ve never lost by that score as a player, never lost by that score as a manager. You just want the ground to swallow you up. Whether it’s a National League Cup game or not, you should have a bit of pride about your work. We didn’t have that tonight.”
Despite the quality posed by the U’s opponents, Morison didn’t hide away from some harsh truths regarding his own side, and is keen to ensure this result is swiftly moved on from, with a first home league match of the season on Saturday against Solihull Moors.
“They were clinical when they had their chances, but it’s still 11 v 11. Some of that team wanted to know why they weren’t playing on Saturday or not on the bench, for example, which they rightly should. And yeah, look, that’s got nothing to do with with ability yeah they can handle all these Under-21 scenes that we play in this cup, can handle the ball really, really well, they’re really energetic just got to match the energy and we didn’t do that and then yeah didn’t win our duels, didn’t win first contacts, didn’t win second contacts and they put us to bed well and truly.”
“We’ve got to get that out of our system, it’s ridiculous. A tough job now to turn them around and refocus them for Saturday. Yeah, that was one of however many games we’ve got this month and we better get ready for Saturday”.
“We’ll go again, we have to go again. It’s rest day and then go again Thursday, ready for Saturday, and it’s going to be like that for the next few weeks so we’ll get used to it.”
