SAINTS manager Russell Martin claims he saw too much “pity and feeling sorry for themselves” in a refreshingly honest reflection of his side’s 3-1 defeat at Gillingham.

The St Mary’s outfit were knocked out of the EFL Cup at the first hurdle as Martin made 11 changes to the team that were victorious in Friday’s Championship opener at Sheffield Wednesday.

Reflecting after the match, Martin said: “Was it a surprise? Yes, in terms of the result. But the performance was more surprising. If we’re going to lose, we need to lose in our way.

“I saw too much stuff that we haven’t worked on and people trying to write their own script. We weren’t brave enough to play properly in the first 25 minutes.

“After Friday’s performance, rather than doing the stuff we work on, we had people doing stuff they wanted to do in self-preservation mode.

“It happens a lot in football, thinking ‘as long as I’m okay and I look after my own game’ but it’s not like that with the way we play, it’s never like that.”

He added: “(There was) too much disappointment and way too much pity and feeling sorry for themselves from some people, and they’re probably the ones who understand they won’t be here or know they won’t be part of the journey.

“I understand that is difficult to deal with but put yourself on the pitch and show the best version of yourself – how you show up in training, as they’ve all been great.

“We had one player playing out of position really and we didn’t see that being a problem – out of the nine senior players, a lot probably think they are Premier League players.

“You’re not when you turn up like you did tonight and when you don’t stick to the work we’ve done and don’t want to be brave enough and you feel sorry for yourself.

“I’m frustrated and I’m upset about the performance and defeat, I’ll always accept it if we’ve really tried to do it our way.

“We have a really big squad but I’m not sure we have a really big squad of players that can help us. It’s not a worry, we trained with 10 boys at home this morning and eight guys who were outstanding on Friday and will be huge in what we do.

“We had a few on the bench tonight and on the pitch, we’ve got more than enough and we will only add to the group when a few more leave.

“There were probably too many on the pitch who think they will be elsewhere and that’s my fault, I should have took into account that more but I thought it would be a good chance to show what they can do on the pitch.”