Ian Evatt insists he and his players will keep striving to deliver the improvement needed to keep Wanderers looking up.
The Whites’ FA Cup campaign ended at the first hurdle with a 2-1 home defeat to Barnsley.
Evatt’s men looked as though they might force a replay after Jon Dadi Bodvarsson’s excellent headed goal left them more than 15 minutes to find an equaliser.
But Barnsley held on to go through and Evatt will now look for a response to a hit-and-miss last few weeks when his side resumes its top-six push at Cambridge United next Saturday.
“It’s been a really frustrating month. We wanted a bit of a cup run and that’s not happened for us,” said the Wanderers’ boss.
“October performance-wise was disappointing. But if a disappointing month looks like three wins and a draw out of seven then it’s not so bad.
“(But) we know there are huge amounts of improvement to come.
“I think the players know that themselves. We are all honest. We understand. We’re not deluded and papering over cracks.
“We know there’s lots of improvement to come that needs to come in this group of players and this team and we will keep striving and working really hard to make sure that happens.
“We want and need to do better. We put huge demands on ourselves, huge demands on the players.
“I put huge demands on myself and the staff and we want to be winners. We want success and this club deserves success.
“I believe our philosophy and our brand and identity, that if we perform well and we do the things we train and coach to do then we get results.”
Evatt changed his starting formation to a 4-3-3 line-up in a bid to get Wanderers back into top gear.
The manager also tweaked his personnel to give the likes of Kieran Sadlier and Dapo Afolayan starting slots in their more preferred positions.
Wanderers looked more fluid at times but ultimately paid the price for allowing a resolute Barnsley side a 2-0 lead in the first half before the Bodvarsson-led fightback fell just short.
“I thought in the first half we looked a threat and got ourselves into some good areas but defensively we looked a little bit open,” added Evatt.
“We conceded two really bad goals. The second one is an excellent strike but it’s the build-up which is awful from our perspective.
“In the second half, again, the team doesn’t know when they’re beaten. The players almost did it again. They never give up. They rallied and put them under pressure and we all thought it might come.
“They are a difficult to play against and we didn’t get that second goal to draw level and that game was probably the theme of the last month really.
“We’ve played well in spells but also given ourselves a mountain to climb.
“We have to re-set, refresh and we’ve got a really big month in the league coming up – concentrating on that, which isn’t a bad thing.”