The Blues boss made 10 changes to the team that had started last weekend’s 2-1 win at Derby County and Josh Windass’ first half goal proved to be the difference.

“If you make changes, go out and win your next league game (back at Wrexham next weekend) then I know there won’t be too many questions,” said McKenna.

“If you look at the schedule and where we would fit in the games for an FA Cup run, to be honest it was really hard to see how that wouldn’t have been to the detriment of the group.

“Having said that, we’re competitive people and it’s a proud football club and there’s a fantastic support here tonight (1,100), so we tried to balance those goals. The players tried and we went to the last second with it.

“We’re really disappointed for the supporters, especially those who travelled. But with the schedule how it is, having a clear focus now on the league games could be really important.

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“We’ve got minutes into some boys tonight, no injuries, and I think that will set us up better for the nine games in four weeks we have coming up.”

Assessing his side’s display, he said: “Of course we’re disappointed with the result. I thought the performance was mixed. I thought we started the game well and had some good looks at the goal, but we lost momentum about halfway into the first half. They had a run of set plays, one after the other and got some good momentum up. We weren’t able to quite withstand that or wrestle it back for the rest of the first half. They got their goal in that period.

“The second half we came out strong again and pushed for the equaliser. We pushed right to the end of the game but it’s not easy to break them down. At that stage they defended the box well and we were close but weren’t able to get over the line.

“It was a tight game but I think the key period was the spell in the first half where they managed to get on top of the game and they were clinical in terms of getting their goal.”

On his team selection, the Blues boss said: “It’s clear that we had two goals coming into tonight. We wanted to go through in the cup and we tried right to the last second to do that. A big priority also had to be getting minutes into players who needed it. It was clear with the schedule that we have and the games that we have to fit in that we’re going to need the squad and we need players match fit and ready to go.

“We had to use tonight for that, to get some players ready and to protect some other players. Within those players who needed the minutes, we also used the opportunity to try some people in some different roles because it could be pivotal for us in the 16 league games we have remaining. You don’t quite know in which game or which moment it might be but that experience of a different relationship or a different position or a different partnership could be pivotal for us.

“We looked at some of those things tonight. There were some positives in there, but when you have a lot of people in a team either getting first minutes for a while or a first start for a while or playing in different partnerships, not everything is going to be smooth.”