Barton blasts his under-par players

JOEY Barton sent a stern warning to his Bristol Rovers players after an awful display saw them booted out of the FA Cup by non-League Boreham Wood yesterday.

Will Evans and David Stephens scored before the half-hour mark to put the National League side in a commanding position and they managed the game expertly to book their place in today’s thirdround draw. Barton, meanwhile, made clear his dissatisfaction in his post-match press conference.

He told the media: “We’ve set our standards and today we were clearly below our standard of performance. For me, certainly in the past 12 months, the standard of performance has been relatively high, but a rude awakening for us and if there is anybody in that dressing room that feels that might be accepted, you know how effective and ruthless and efficient we are.

“Their feet won’t hit the ground if they think that’s the level of performance. The FA Cup is great and we want to have a good cup run and visit some grounds.

“Are we going to win the FA Cup? Absolutely not. Could we take the fans on a journey and the team on a journey? Yeah, so I’m disappointed in that regard, but the bread and butter for us is to establish ourselves as a League One club, which we’re making a good fist of. On the whole, our lads are superb. Today, we were miles short.”