Don't panic! Don't panic!

"You're not very good! You're not very good! You're not very, you're not very, you're not very good!" I thought at the time that the Blackthorn Stand's raucous greeting to last night's opponents Norwich City could be holding a number of hostages to fortune (not to mention counting canaries before they hatched) notwithstanding their 7-1 home loss to Colchester last weekend and so it proved; the visitors progressed to the next round of the League Cup with a comfortable 0-4 win. Ouch.

The fact is that the visitors were pretty good and we, a reasonable 20-minute spell in the first half aside, were pretty ordinary. Still, better to be ordinary in a cup competition that we have no chance of winning than in a league game, which is one of the few crumbs of comfort we can draw from what was in the end a dismal evening.

The team lined up as follows:

1. Alex McCarthy - 6/10: Don't think I would blame him for any of the goals. Had plenty to do and did most of it well, not his fault he was left horribly exposed at times.

6. Terrell Forbes - 4/10: Defended inadequately at best but unlike the previous game was nowhere to be seen going forward. A match to forget.

4. Stefan Stam - 4/10: Struggled with the physical presence of Grant Holt and too often caught in possession. A game to forget.

5. Steven Caulker - 5/10: The best of the defenders on the night, but that's not saying much. A game to learn from.

3. Nathan Jones - 4/10: Strangely subdued. Can't recall one stepover! If his first half free-kick had been on target with the keeper beaten then who knows what might have happened, but it scraped the wrong side of the post. A game to forget.

16. Scott Murray - 6/10: Best of the midfielders. Worked his way into a couple of good positions but firing blanks at the moment when pulling the trigger. More to come, hopefully.

7. George O'Callaghan - 5/10: Ineffective from the start and ultimately swamped. A game to forget.

22. Danny Schofield - 4/10: Took me 20 minutes to realise he was on the pitch. Twenty minutes into the second half, that is. A game to forget.

11. Andy Welsh - 5/10: Flattered to deceive in his approach play, but his final ball either from open play or the set-piece was poor. Couldn't score in a brothel, to coin a phrase.

9. Sam Williams - 6/10: Didn't stop trying all night despite a battering from the experienced Gary Doherty and suffering from some unsympathetic refereeing decisions. Won his share of long balls in the air despite that, just a shame we couldn't supply him better in the danger area from the wings.

10. Gavin Tomlin - 5/10: Tried hard and linked up well with Williams, but again missed his share of chances. With Obika now here must be worried for his starting place.

Subs: 26. Jonathan Obika (63 mins for Scott Murray) - 5/10: Asking a lot for anyone to spark a side playing poorly into life, especially on his first day back. Asking too much, in fact.

28. Nathan Smith (85 mins for Andy Welsh) - N/A: Not on long enough to make an impression.

Just as Saturday's win over Tranmere didn't turn us into promotion favourites nor should last night's loss mean we're nailed on for relegation. The truth hopefully lies somewhere in between. In the first half we looked more or less on a par with Norwich without ever being particularly convincing, but were shell-shocked by the first goal and got gradually worse as the night went on. It was surely right to bring Obika on after the opening goal but sacrificing our most effective midfielder for the striker was puzzling - still, in the end Norwich may have done us a favour in tempering expectations that were just beginning to stray into unrealistic levels. We are still the smallest club in League One with one of the smallest squads and operating with the smallest budget. Let's never forget that.