Dino Maamria was left deeply disappointed after seeing his troops go down by one goal to nil at Plymouth in the FA Cup First Round...
After staving off the League One Pilgrims for over 90 minutes, substitute Lameiras struck in added time to send Stevenage crashing out of the compeitition.
“I am gutted that we are out of the cup, I really wanted to go a long way," Maamria said.
"It is just typical that my first experience of a manager at this football club, we get Plymouth away. Having said that, I came into the game certain that we were going to win today. I felt we were ready and we had a really good week. We know them inside out, we knew the threats that they were going to pose to us and we knew we could attack them as well with our threats.”
“Unfortunately, it was a moment of quality from their number 11, who was pretty lively. Seny did brilliantly to clear the first one, we then cleared the second one and it was a great finish in the bottom corner with three minutes to go."
One of the biggest talking points from the game was the injury to Steve Seddon, which saw the young loanee stretchered off the pitch before heading to local hospital.
Fortunately, Seddon was discharged soon after and is now back at home on the mend.
“I think Steve Seddon coming off threw us a little bit. I did not want to go defensive because it is a cup game, you need to keep your attacking players on the pitch. I wanted to keep the threat there. We ended up with Revell, Guthrie, Newton, Campbell-Ryce and they are all attacking players. That is because I wanted to win the game.
"If there are any regrets about it, I thought we defended brilliantly, but we should have played with more belief going forward.
"We had big moments in the attacking third but we just didn't have any belief, certainly not in the way we have been working in the week.
"Even if we drew that game, I would have been saying we need to do more going forward."
Despite the obvious disapointment, Maamria must now clear it out of the system and prepare for Saturday's return to League Two at Bury, with Stevenage in the thick of the promotion picture.
“It hurts me personally. In terms of the football club, we rely on the cup for many things.
"For me, I wanted to go a long way in the FA Cup because it is what this club is built on. I am gutted, but I will get over it tonight and come back Monday ready for Bury next week.”
---
Subscribe to iFollow for only £4.49 a month & gain full access to all official videos, including all interviews, full match highlights and also live match commentary.
To find out more about our video service, please click here.
