Paul Warne admitted Derby County didn’t do enough to beat Leyton Orient as they were dumped out of the FA Cup on penalties.
Callum Elder’s spot-kick was saved in a shootout to hand the League One side a 6-5 win and a money-spinning cup tie against Manchester City.
Derby had earlier come from behind to make it 1-1 in normal time with Dajaune Brown cancelling out Charlie Kelman’s opener. Derby had the greater share of possession in the second half with Josh Keeley making two fine saves to deny Corey Blackett-Taylor.
Derby’s cause was not helped as Mendez-Laing and Blackett-Taylor had to be replaced owed to tight muscles and Derby head coach Warne felt the substitutes did not make much of an impact.
“I don’t think we did enough to win the game,” he said. “That’s the truth. We were not aggressive enough in the challenge. We had moments of good play and our goal came from good play.
“We didn’t test the goalkeeper enough. We were a little bit soft in the middle of the park first half. I had to take Nat Mendez-Laing off because he had a tight calf.
“I changed the frontline to try and jazz it up for the last half-hour and I thought we would go on to win the game. But we didn’t create enough. The goalkeeper didn’t make enough saves. Corey did well one side, blew up a little bit. The same with Nat the other side.
“We made the changes but we got a little bit worse I thought. We didn’t really create enough going forward. It was a pretty stalemate cup tie.”