Ashford United manager Tommy Warrilow fed up of hearing what's wrong after Nuts & Bolts make FA Trophy progress

Tommy Warrilow called for positivity after Ashford won an FA Trophy First Qualifying Round thriller on penalties.

The Nuts & Bolts led AFC Sudbury 3-1 on Tuesday with goals from Stephen Okoh, Charlie Dickens and George Nikaj, only to concede twice at the death.

But they won the shoot-out 5-4 with Mamadou Diallo scoring the decisive penalty after Jacob Russell kept out the Isthmian North leaders’ second spot-kick.

Ashford will host Three Bridges in the next round a week on Saturday.

“We did it the hard way but no one’s got a divine right to win a game of football,” said boss Warrilow.

“Everyone’s going to be talking about the last five minutes, where we’ve let the two goals in, but they forget what went on before that and I thought we were the better team.

“We’re playing a side who are top of their league and haven’t lost this season and we’ve got the win.

“I’m always looking at the positives. We know what’s wrong, and our job is to make it right, but there’s lots of positives.

“At 3-1 down, you’re going to throw everything at it and unfortunately we’ve panicked and shown a bit of naivety.

“I’m fed up of hearing what’s wrong, I know what’s wrong, I want to start hearing some positives because we haven’t had a bad start to the season.

“We’re having spells in games where we’re losing our way but we know that, let’s get some positivity in here.

“We know we’re not 100% but we’re still winning and surely that’s a good thing because we’re only going to get better.

“We can’t keep telling the boys what’s wrong, we’ve got to tell them the positives as well. That’s why it’s called management, you’ve got to manage players.”

It’s a repeat of last year’s Isthmian South East play-off final when Ashford face Herne Bay in the FA Cup