Town boss Mick McCarthy says it’s unfair to judge his fringe players on their performances as part of the much-changed side which was defeated 2-1 at Portsmouth in Tuesday's FA Cup third round replay.
McCarthy admitted that he was annoyed after the defeat at Fratton Park: "Yes, I was angry, I don’t like being beaten at all. I tell you what I was angry about, I think our players that played, and some of the younger ones, are better than how we actually played.
"We were playing against an opposition who are a good team and you’ve got to give them credit, but I just think we are better than that, the lads beneath the first team.
"But it also highlighted to me how important that first team is, to keep them right and to have them fit and to have them at 100 per cent. Well, are you ever 100 per cent during a season? I’m not sure.
"But to be rested and ready to go against a Birmingham team who didn’t have a game on Tuesday because we’ve got a real chance of being in that top six and I’ve really got to give us the best chance of staying in that top six.”
He says it wouldn’t be right for fans to write players off purely on the basis of their performances at Fratton Park.
"[That would be] unfair,” he said. "I’d cite Josh Emmanuel for that at Brentford. When he was playing there and he’d got Chambo alongside him and Tommy Smith and Jonas, and all right he had [another youngster] Ainsley in front of him, but nevertheless a very capable player, it’s a different ball game to having a lot of them in together.”
He added: "The lads that have always been around, the likes of Tabby, Luke Hyam, Brett and Ainsley, we know they can all play, they’ve all played in the team.
"I kind of feel a little bit for the young ‘uns because when Josh came into the team at Brentford with 10 other first team players, he was fine. And that would be the case with all of them.
"I’d take the rap for that, maybe there were too many changes for them to impress and to be pushing for the first team. The first team squad’s good.”
While he says he felt it was a missed opportunity for some of them to press a claim for more regular involvement, he’s not going to be giving them a hard time.
"Individually I’m not going to be giving out too much to them because when I made those changes, those collective changes, maybe there were too many,” he conceded.
"Maybe I have a bit more faith in them than they have in themselves, some of them.
"But we made mistakes. The two goals were awful defending. To give a penalty away and the second was just a cross into the box. That doesn’t normally happen.
"Although they had a good start I thought the game was fairly even. They’d had a bit better of the first 30 minutes but the goal changed it, the penalty was awful.”
McCarthy was far from the only manager to rest many of his senior players in the FA Cup and he says that that’s likely to be the situation in the competition for the foreseeable future.
"Maybe that’s going to be the case and I don’t particularly like it, I’d like to be able to just play my strongest team for 46 games and all the cup games, but they’d all be injured because it’s a helluva season,” he said.
"I tell you what I wouldn’t want to be, I wouldn’t want to be 15th without a chance of going up and maybe just making sure we stay up and then having a good cup run.
"Yes, there’s the glory of it and I love the FA Cup, I used to go to all the games when I was a kid.
"I was in a semi-final with Sunderland. Yes, I’d love to be in a final, yes, I’d love to win it, but we’ve got a real opportunity of getting promoted and we’ve got to do our level best to be in that top six to give us that chance.”