‘Not good enough’ - Fareham’s FA Cup exit
Pete Stiles branded Fareham Town's start to the season 'not good enough' after they exited to FA Cup at Wessex League Premier Division rivals Alresford.
Louis Russell's first-half strike proved the difference as the Reds were on the wrong end of a 1-0 preliminary round defeat.
It continued Fareham's inconsistent start this term, with boss Stiles far from satisfied with a return of one win from five matches in all competitions.
The Reds boss acknowledged he must turn things around quickly and get his side firing again.
But he was particularly disappointed by the showing his squad served up on such a big occasion.
Stiles fumed: ‘It’s annoying because I love the FA Cup and we didn’t do ourselves justice and let ourselves down on the day.
‘We’ll train twice this week, we’ll have it out, see where we are and move on from there.
‘I’ve got to turn this around, our start just isn’t good enough, we’ve won one game out of four and we’re out of the FA Cup - it’s not good enough.
‘We were not at it at all, certain players’ attitudes were wrong, ones who were on the bench were sulking. It wasn’t great.
‘I can’t have that and there are things which have got to change.
‘I just think that we weren’t at it at all, we weren’t good enough, we deserved to go out which is disappointing because if we’d played to our potential we’d have beaten them. We didn’t and we got what we deserved.’
After keeping out his initial shot, Fareham stopper Dan Kempson could do nothing as Russell was on hand to fire home the rebound to get what proved to be Alresford's decisive goal after 23 minutes.
Stiles did at least see an improvement from his team after the restart but it was not enough to get back into the tie.
The Fareham boss was also less than an impressed with the level of officiating in such a high calibre competition.
Stiles bemoaned: ‘I’m not blaming them, but the officials were unbelievably bad.
‘There were several incidents. There was one where one of my players probably did catch someone late and they booked their player. Even worse than that, the linesman flagged for an offside from a throw-in.
‘They were horrendously bad, I’m not blaming them for the result, but it certainly doesn’t help.
‘It was farcical. The game kept stopping, especially in the second half, it stopped so many times.’
Fareham bid for a first Wessex Premier win against rock bottom Hythe & Dibden at Cams Alders next Saturday.