Lynn youngsters need to learn from defeat, says U23 boss

Josh Coulson hopes King’s Lynn Town’s youngsters will learn a lot from their 5-0 defeat to Wroxham in the Norfolk Senior Cup on Tuesday night.The club’s under-23s were blown away by their Isthmian League North visitors at The Walks as they exited the competition at the quarter-final stage.Former Linnets Craig Parker and Ryan Hawkins both played for the Yachtsmen with the latter scoring a brace during a disappointing evening for Lynn’s young guns.Coulson said: “The young boys have got a lot to learn. It was men versus boys and I think our discipline showed.”I don’t want to hammer them too much as they’re young lads, but they’ve got a lot to learn.”I think they’ve got to take on instructions better, I’ve just told them, and the goals we gave away are poor for me. It doesn’t matter what step you’re playing at they were poor goals to give away.”I’ve seen us play a lot better than that, which is probably why I was so frustrated watching it. These are the games where they’ve now got to go home and assess where they’re at. “Some of them probably want to play at that level of football in Step 4. A lot of ours are Step 5 players who are playing at Step 5, but it just shows where they need to be if they want to go and earn a bit of money from football.” Three goals in the opening 13 minutes of the second half effectively ended the tie after the Linnets went into the break 1-0 down.”When you concede like that and then you’re chasing it, trying to change the system to get more players up top, but again we make another mistake for another goal,” said Coulson.”They scored another cutback goal, which we talked about. They’ve not listened and taken it on board and 3-0 kills the game. “I don’t think we probably had two shots all game, to be honest.”Coulson ended by paying tribute to former academy director Alex Cross who has left the club for a similar role at National League Hartlepool United. “I’ve said it on social media but thank you to Crossy. What he’s done at this football club is amazing. I think what he’s built and some of the staff he’s got in and the players.”A lot of credit needs to go to Alex Cross and massive good luck in his new role. I speak to him pretty much daily. I spoke to him today and he was wishing the boys the best. “Behind the scenes, not a lot of people see what he does and think he was a bit underappreciated.”Look people move on, he’s gone up a level and he’s moved a long way away from here.”He’ll be a massive loss and the club needs to get someone in who is going take on that role or promote within.”Hopefully that will be done soon and we can crack on because we have got a real good set-up here.”