John Gregory: ‘Going out of the FA Cup hurts me very badly’

John Gregory presided over a miserable exit at the first hurdle from the competition which with QPR he reached the final of as a player and with Aston Villa as a manager.

Gregory said admitted going out so soon hurt him badly and accused some of his players as playing without passion.

He said: “We made one mistake, an absolute howler which cost us the game coming from a player who you don’t expect to make a mistake (Joe Walsh).

“It was a gift, a donation. Other than that Jamie Ashdown hasn’t had a lot to do. It had 0-0 all over it and a replay but we couldn’t get the goal back.

“It’s the end of the FA Cup for us this season which hurts very very badly.

“There was too much hope and there weren’t enough ruthless people who play with 100 percent passion.”

Gregory warned: “It’s been the story of the season for many, many weeks. We need to wake up very, very quickly. I can’t wait for Izale to get us a goal.

“We have a Johnstone’s Paint Trophy game coming up on Tuesday but the FA Cup means far more to me than the JPT.

“I am scatching my head over today’s performance. We shouldn’t get beat. Yeovil are a nice football team, pass the ball quite well but we were suffering a lack of invention and passion.

“I thought today there wasn’t enough ruthlessness running through the team. We rely on the same invididuals week after week and if they aren’t careful they might get left behind.”

Gregory revealed Gwion Edwards was taken off after 60 minutes because he was suffering from a slight hernia injury.

He also praised Ryan Dickson for returning from a knee injury and playing the entire 90 minutes despite not having played for six weeks while Sonny Bradley is ill and didn’t travel with the squad.”

He admitted the switch to using the 4-4-2 formation had not wroked as well as it could do and added: “We carried too many people today, too many passengers. It was not good enough!”