Di Paola: '˜I can't be too harsh on my players'

It was his side’s opening game of the season since returning to the Ryman League

But the Horsham boss had put the team together at the last minute due to unavailability.

Di Paola said: “I thought they (Carshalton) were the better team, they deserved to win to be fair.

“We cobbled the side together: the right-back (Lewis Hyde), left-back (Matt Whitehead) and goalkeeper (Anthony Elder) had not played for us before.

“They signed for us on Tuesday and Thursday this week. We had no Tom Lawley, Mark Knee, Adam Hunt, Al Duncan, we had four missing out of starting 11 missing today.

“They are a good side, I think they will be in the top-eight come the end of the season.

“We let in some cheap goals and made some silly mistakes and we’ve just got to learn from them.

“We knew we be having a really hard month coming into this league from step five and we’ve just got to deal with that we’ll just have to assess it after six weeks and see how we done.

“We have 13 new players, that’s too many; if you look at them (Carshalton) they had maybe two or three and that’s a big difference and that’s a big factor really.

“Today was a bit of a gimme because we obviously wanted to win the game but knew it was going to be really difficult.”

Don’t miss out on all the latest breaking news where you live.

Here are four ways you can be sure you’ll be among the first to know what’s going on.

1 Make our website your homepage at www.wscountytimes.co.uk

2 Like our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/wscountytimes

3 Follow us on Twitter @wscountytimes

4 Register with us by clicking on ‘sign in’ (top right corner). You can then receive our daily newsletter AND add your point of view to stories that you read here.

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

The County Times – always the first with your local news.

Be part of it.