Gorleston send St Albans City crashing out of FA Cup

With just three points from their first nine National League South games, redemption was seemingly coming in the FA Cup, their only competitive win of the season coming in the second qualifying round away to Needham Market.

But beleaguered manager David Noble could only watch on in disbelief as the Norfolk minnows, two divisions beneath Saints in the Isthmian League Division One North, stunned them with a 4-2 win.

They will now go into Monday's draw one game away from the first round proper while for Saints, question marks grow larger over the future of the boss.

He though is vowing to battle on.

"Of course," he said, "I'm a winner. Defeats hurt me, especially for this club.

"I want to win for St Albans more than anything else. I've been at this club for seven years, I don't know how many hundred games.

"I've been through the good and the bad and this is a bad day, probably the worst I've had at St Albans.

"But of course I have the desire to turn this around."

Josh Castiglione had equalised at Gorleston. Picture: JIM STANDEN (Image: Jim Standen) The contest itself saw Gorleston take the lead on 41 minutes through Christy Finch only for Saints to equalise eight minutes into the second half through Josh Castiglione.

However, in the space of the next nine minutes they shipped three goals, meaning a 77th-minute strike from Shaun Jeffers was merely a consolation.

And Noble had another word beginning with 'c' for that horrific spell.

"It was a capitulation," he said.

"We've done the hard bit to get back into the game and we had two or three chances in the first half where we could have taken the lead.

"We then gave them the lead just before half-time, and I emphasise the word 'gave', and we knew it would difficult. We thought it might take a little bit of time to get the equaliser.

"To get it so early in the second half, you think you are either going to go on and win it or worse case, you take them back to the Park.

"The 10 minutes after we scored can only be described as a capitulation.

"I struggle to understand what we are thinking with some of those goals. It is not good enough.

"They are not scored from breakaways. For it to happen in a 10-minute period, it isn't good enough at any level."

He accepts as well that giantkilling is part and parcel of the FA Cup, he cannot accept the way it happened though and the manner of the goals conceded.

He said: "[Cup upsets] happen all the time and you just hope you do things right and you perform with the right mindset and attitude.

"It'll happen for as long as this competition is going but I can't accept that 10 minute spell.

"You could go through all four goals but their penalty, their player is up against three of ours but he goes through without a glove being landed and wins a penalty.

"One goal was worse than the next, which after the first that was quite difficult to do."