It’s tough to justify a 4-0 deficit at the half and the ‘rojiblanco’ players didn’t hesitate to place the blame squarely on themselves after the poor opening 45 minutes. Diego Costa acknowledged that “we have to learn from this loss. We weren’t even there in the first half and in the second we played a bit better. They played perfectly. All of their shots ended in a goal. We didn’t want to be humiliated and that’s why we were better in the second half.”

The Brazilian striker stated that “now we have to forget about the loss and think about the Cup match. We have to stand up and give a better image; we have to give our all and go for broke. The greatness of the Club and the fans don’t deserve these types of losses.”

For his part, Paulo Assunçao assured that “it’s tough to explain the loss. Hércules scored four goals on four shots on goal. We were a bit better in the second half. We have to lift our heads and try to play better. We knew that they were very strong at home, although we’re leaving surprised by their clinical finishing. We’re a good team, we’ll show that and we’ll pick ourselves back up from the loss we suffered.”

Finally, Ujfalusi was the last of the players to appear before the press. “Yeah, they thrashed us. You can’t give anything away to any opponent. All teams can take advantage of it, and Hércules was very accurate in their finishing. It’s not the first time that we’ve given away goals. We’d only conceded 1 goal in 5 matches and we gave up 4 to Hércules. If we want to be in the top spots we can’t make things so easy. We have to be at 100%. We know that we’re the only ones who are guilty. Now we have to forget about this and get ready for the match against Real Madrid and get back to being the team that we were.”