MALCOLM Shotton blasted his Oxford United players for thinking they are "big-time Charlies" after a humiliating cup exit last night.
And he warned that some will be shown the door unless they start producing.
The team threw away the hard work of a 3-2 first-leg lead from Luton in their Worthington Cup first-round tie as they sat on a barely-deserved first-half advantage and paid the price.
Second division Luton hit back to win 3-1 on the night, 5-4 on aggregate and dump Oxford out of the competition.
A furious Shotton has ordered the players back in today for training - and back in this evening when they will all turn out for the reserves in the first Avon Insurance Combination game of the season against Peterborough at the Manor.
"We got exactly what we deserved," he lamented straight after the match. "Some of them thought it was going to be too easy. They'll find out how easy it is tomorrow morning and they'll all be playing in the reserves tomorrow night.
"Some of them think they are big-time Charlies and they were certainly brought down to earth."
Shotton admitted: "The players are very down, and rightly so. I told them a few home truths which I think they took in.
"They've got two choices . . . they either take it or they get out of the club. On the balance of today, we were a disgrace."
Home fans streaming away from the game were complaining bitterly that Oxford's players hadn't been "up for it" and Shotton agreed that Luton seemed more committed.
"Some of our lads thought it was over and done with and it's not acceptable," he said. "We went a goal up and then they thought 'that's it, this is easy' and, fair play to Luton, they came and did a very, very good job and deserved it.
"I've no qualms about the result at all. We just sat back and thought it's easy and it's not acceptable. The second half, particularly, was our worst performance since I've been at the club."
The players normally have a day off after a midweek match but Shotton said: "They don't deserve one. It's a punishment but they've got to get this out of their system and the sooner they start playing and we get it out of the system, the better.
"They can either react positively to this, or not play, it's as simple as that."
Midfielder Nicky Banger summed up the players' reaction: "We're desperately disappointed. I'm gutted and the rest of the lads are.
"The manager's gone mad with us. I don't think the lads went out there thinking we're not going to give 100 per cent.
"We went 4-2 up, Luton got back into it and then for long spells in the game it seemed they wanted it more than us. Normally at Oxford, we've been a hard team to score against but we're not defending well enough as a team and we've been under pressure a lot.
"Luton put away their chances and we didn't, but overall they were the better side. We're devastated by the result and what we've got to do now is get back to basics and work hard."
Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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