Grant McCann frustrated with his Peterborough United players who have made the manager's decisions easy ahead of tough League One fixtures

Posh went down 1-0 to a last-gasp Jamie Reid strike and McCann accepted his team deserved to lose.

Posh lined up with nine changes from Saturday’s rout against Lincoln and struggled to get into any rhythm against a robust Stevenage side, who had made eight changes of their own.

A triple change that saw Ben Thompson, Jack Marriott and Jonson Clarke-Harris come on before the hour mark showed the manager’s frustrations but Posh’s regulars were unable to prevent McCann’s side from crashing out.

McCann said: “We deserved to lose. We didn’t compete enough and we lost too many of our duels. When you come to a place like this, you have to win those battles and we just didn’t get it right. We knew exactly what we would be up against tonight.

“It’s frustrating, disappointing and a big wake-up call for some of the players. It was a big opportunity for some of them tonight and I’m disappointed that they did not perform. It makes it easy for me and I wanted a difficult decision for Saturday.

“We didn’t want the ball, we didn’t compete. I can take getting beat but first and foremost, you have to compete at the bare minimum. It’s happened to us at Cheltenham in the first half and again tonight.

“When the subs came on, we were different and you could see that.”

Posh must put this latest EFL Cup disappointment to the back of their minds quickly as they now face two sides much-fancied sides for promotion, Derby and Portsmouth, in League One in back-to-back away league games. They will face a rematch with Stevenage in the EFL Trophy in between but that match is likely to be low priority.

McCann did manage to find some positive though. Mainly in that goalkeeper Will Blackmore looked strong in his first career start and that Kwame Poku was able to complete 55 minutes - his first action of the season.

McCann added: “There were some positives and we will always try to take them and learn from the mistakes. It’s a frustrating night being out of the cup we have to focus on the league now.

“That’s vital minutes into Kwame, he’s a huge player for us. I thought Will did well and well done to him on his first start. I thought he did most things well and he made one really good save at the start of the second half and another good one with his feet, but I’m disappointed for him to have conceded so late on his full debut.”