An angry Andy Ritchie talked to htafc.com tonight following the Johnstone's Paint Trophy defeat at the hands of League Two Grimsby Town.

"To say I'm not happy would be an understatement. The players know my feelings - we thoroughly deserved to get beaten 4-1 and it could have been 6. We were abysmal.

"There was no passion and we weren't at the races. I'll back my players and credit them when they need it, but they don't need any tonight with one exception - Joe Skarz. He was the only player that showed anything and we thoroughly deserved what we got.

"Grimsby were the better team by far; they wanted it more, they hurt us and we didn't compete anywhere on the pitch. You get beaten when you don't do that.

"It was Rochdale revisited. We didn't get out of the blocks and if we had gone it 1-0 up at half-time I would have been embarrassed, because we didn't deserve it.

"We never picked up Fenton from set-pieces and that resulted in him scoring from a corner and setting up another. We know he's very good at that, but we didn't pick him up and perhaps we should have changed it but that's down to the players on the pitch - we can't tell them to do everything from the sideline. Whoever was meant to be picking him up has to hold their hands up and say 'I'm having a bad night', then get somebody else to take him - or even block his run. We have to take more responsibility on the pitch.

"Sometimes I don't think we are nasty enough with each other, in that we let each other get away with doing things wrong. That shouldn't be the case - it's a man's game and if you get a bit of a rollicking off each other, it should gee you up and be taken in the right way.

"We have to put it down as a collective off-night and hope that it won't happen again. I suppose one good thing is that it happened in the Cup and not in the League, but the players know that it's not acceptable. The fans who came here tonight have been let down and I apologise to them.

"I didn't think the referee gave us anything all night, but that's no excuse. We took Nathan (Clarke) off as we didn't want him suspended for being sent-off and it was good that Tom (Clarke) could come on and get a few minutes on the pitch. With Luke (Beckett), we decided to save his legs for Saturday but I thought Lucas (Akins) did ok when he came on.

"Danny (Schofield) did superbly to give us 60+ minutes as we didn't think we would get that out of him on his comeback. To be fair to Danny, he did a show a couple of good touches at times but collectively we weren't at the races.

"If you don't hold the ball up then you won't get a chance to play. Every time it went up to their forwards, it looked like it would stick and you live and die by your forwards. Maybe I'm being over-critical because I was one, but your forwards have to hold the ball up to give the other players a chance to get up and support you. However, that wasn't a major thing tonight as we didn't get close to them all over the pitch."