Edwards’ Boro got off to a fine start in the Championship when they beat Swansea City 1-0 but they were brought down to earth with a bump when they were thumped 4-0 by League One Donny on Tuesday night.
Edwards pulled no punches in his assessment of the “unacceptable” performance immediately after the game, and described the loss as “painful”.
The head coach was brutally honest as he addressed his players in the Riverside dressing room after the game. and while Edwards and his staff intended to further analyse the cup tie yesterday and provide feedback to the squad on issues that need addressing, he was also keen to ensure Boro don’t dwell on the defeat for too long, instead turning his attention to Saturday’s league trip to Millwall.
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He said: “We have to be able to look forward. It was a painful night.
“Football gives you highs and lows. We had a real high on Saturday and a real low tonight.
“We’re human beings, you’re allowed to feel like that but we need to get ourselves back level again and pick ourselves up.
“We’ll learn from it.”
Edwards added: “We review it but sometimes you can dwell on things too long.
“The players know. We’ll pick out the bits we need to show but at the same time you can’t just batter people because we need to pick players off the floor and go in in confident mood on Saturday.
“We need to get the balance right.”
The next game is a tough one for Boro, with Millwall having won impressively at Norwich on the opening weekend before a 1-0 cup success at Newport on Tuesday night.
Edwards said: “We need a few days to recover and learn and be prepared for the next one.
“The beautiful thing with football is you get an opportunity quickly to turn things around.
“We need to show the side of us that we saw on Saturday. Over a period of time now there’s been too much inconsistency here.
“We saw [against Doncaster] the real drop off that we can’t have.”
Edwards made five changes in midweek but will almost certainly now revert back to the side that started against Swansea.
Among the five players to come into the side against Doncaster were youngsters Law McCabe and George McCormick and new signing Abdoulaye Kante.
While Edwards was disappointed with displays across the board, he knows patience is needed with players who lack experience at this level.
He said: “It’s hard to ask a lot of young George, and Law and Alpha were playing in there together for the first time and they’re young players.
“I thought they showed glimpses and some good moments of real quality but it was a tough night in the end.
“They’ll learn a lot from it. These are good young players who we have high hopes for.
“The young ones are a little bit exempt from it in a way, they have to learn from it quick.”
