“The big picture is that my hands were tied in the selection process regarding who I could pick. My hands have been tied nearly all season, because a lot of my players have not played even a third of the season so far due to trauma and other injuries.
“We know what the problem is and we’ve got to overcome the problem as quickly as possible.
“Nobody wants to get beat and we certainly don’t want to get beat 5-0, but at the end of the day the semi-final against Manchester City is more important than this game.
“More managers change their team for the FA Cup than don’t. Billy Davies didn’t change his team, but he is one of very few. Most managers, even from the Championship, will change their team for the FA Cup third round.
“Managers change their team in the Capital One Cup as we did this year to good effect because we’ve got to the semi-finals.
“It would have been impossible to play the same 14 players on Sunday, on Wednesday and next Saturday at Cardiff, because that would have promoted us getting more injuries than we have already got.
“Circumstances were against me and I had to play the young players. I told everybody very early, so everybody knew what was going to happen. I was hoping the players were still going to stand up and make a better game of it, but unfortunately they didn’t.