The Gills went out of the Carling Cup on Tuesday night at Norwich and boss Andy Hessenthaler pointed to his team's defending as the major reason.

"The score-line does flatter them a little bit but if you going to defend the way that we defended tonight then you are going to concede goals aren't you?

"I'm certainly very disappointed in the way we defended, not just individually, but as a group. It's easy to blame the back five, I think we could all have done better but there were certain individual errors, especially at 1-0, you've got them exactly where you want them.

"We knew that we could come here and made it difficult for them early on, especially on the back of a defeat on Friday night. We said it's important in the first 20 minutes that we don't give a sloppy goal away and give them a lift, getting the fans behind them. Fortunately for us we got the goal and so the momentum was with ourselves and we had them really where we wanted them. Then we gave a silly goal away, you can't give their strikers them [sort of] opportunities because they'll hurt you, it's disappointing really because offensively we looked really good tonight.

"Obviously we had a really good chance to make it 2-0 when the big man [Adebayo Akinfenwa] hit the cross-bar from a great ball from Spiller. If that goes in then maybe it's a different story but if we defend like that then we are going to come unstuck against sides like Norwich.

Bayo Akinfenwa hit the bar.....

"The score-line, 4-1, certainly makes it look like we've been played off the park, that certainly wasn't the case, offensively we looked very good at times. As a group we work on the training ground day in, day out, we spoke about playing a high line and getting after them but we didn't do that tonight. That's the disappointing thing.

"You work on the training ground during the week. I felt that we were too deep at times on Saturday and, not being funny, their two centre forwards have got great movement but they are not outstandingly quick. So I don't know the reason why we had to play so deep. The second goal, he's picked it up quite deep. The balls gone wide and he [Holt] has got on the end of it and scored. If we are higher up the pitch and squeeze them into their own half then that doesn't happen.

"So I'm disappointed the players didn't listen because we have worked on that, they've been told so, so it's going to be a tough few days for us to work on things ready for the weekend.

"If they don't listen then I'll change it, we'll change the players, we've just told them that, we're here to manage and coach and we did it on training ground, we spoke about it on the training ground from the weekend, being a little bit brutal, if these players are not prepared to listen, and do what we ask them to do, then we change them.

"It's a lesson to be learnt tonight, I hope they've learnt their lesson come Saturday against Hereford, we need to bounce back. Unfortunately the away record continues. The Gills came here last year and did well in spells, then conceded from a sloppy goal and ended up losing the game and I think that's pretty much what happened again tonight. We had good spells in the game but didn't defend properly and you can't do that against sides like this.

"It was a nice game to be involved in, we believed we could come here and cause a shock, unfortunately that wasn't the case in the end but you're never going to cause shocks if we defend the way that we did. We'll be on the training ground this week drumming into them how to defend."

Looking at individual performances on the night, Hess had the following to say, talking initially about scorer Chris Palmer."He put some great balls in, he's got some great qualities Palm's, but I've got to say about the big man up top [Akinfenwa], I played him tonight, he really shouldn't have played, he's had a virus and been struggling but he said "I'll give it a go". To be honest he played a lot longer than I thought but I started thinking about the weekend, that's the most important game now, the Hereford game. So we've got to get him right for that. I thought he was very good up there, Andy Barcham ran his socks off, Kevin Maher came on and done great when Jack Payne picked up an injury. So there were some good performances but I'm disappointed with the score-line.

We still had a good team out there tonight, in spells it was pleasing and in spells it was disappointing, there are lessons to be learned. Hopefully we'll learn from tonight and put it right this Saturday.