Shrewsbury Town's first game on English soil this pre-season ended in defeat at the hands of Brackley Town.
The National League North side scored twice before the interval, before a much changed Town side got one back in the second half through Alex Rodman.
“The result doesn’t worry me, but at the same time the way we played for large parts I wasn’t pleased with.
“I’m not trying to dress it up and there is no doubt that Brackley were the better team. Their formation caused us problems and at this stage in pre-season I’m looking for the players to sort it out and part of the disappointment is how many people did I really see getting onto their colleagues to try and sort things out?
“There were no excuses. Sometimes you can go to places and moan about the pitch and all of that, but that wasn’t the case. Yes we trained today, but I’m guessing a lot of their lads have been to work, so I’m not sure which is better preparation.
“There weren’t too many positives and the team bore the brunt of that at half-time and the rest of them will understand more about how I feel tomorrow.
“There were a couple of things tactically that weren’t great, but a lot of it just came down to passing the ball. We were far too slow. Brackley worked hard, but we let them get behind the ball, so there is lots and lots to work on.”
Paul wanted the players to have no excuses for the performance and hoped this would act as a wake-up call to some.
“Some of them looked a bit tired”, admitted Hurst.
“I don’t want to make excuses for them and we have trained and had a bit of travelling involved, but for me it comes down to desire and that was lacking in my opinion.
“People say that it’s pre-season and it’s a friendly, but we are trying to set standards. That’s a big thing we are trying to do with a new group. Some of the lads know how we work, some of them will have to realise very quickly how we do work or they won’t be in the starting line-up.”
There was one bright point for Paul to reflect on with Daniel James showing some nice turns of pace at times.
“Dan did some things very well”, said Paul.
“At least he drove forward with the ball, but I think there is no doubt that there is some work to be done there in terms of the positional sense etc.
“They played wing-backs and I think we were very slow to understand that. At times we had so many men behind the ball and didn’t put any pressure on the ball. The one time we did put the pressure on the ball we won a throw in and scored from there.”