Paul Wotton thinks he picked the wrong team for last Saturday’s FA Trophy fourth round tie at Worthing – but the players he did pick should have done better in the 5-1 defeat.

Torquay were 4-0 down at half time in Sussex before Wotton threw on the three players he had rested for the tie – Jordan Dyer, Jordan Young and Cody Cooke. In a better second half, Young scored a great free kick but another Worthing goal followed.

Worthing are no Bishops Cleeve, they are just a few places below the Gulls in the National League South, but the game did have the feel of Torquay’s defeat by the Southern League team in the FA Cup. So ahead of the coming weekend’s National South game against Welling United, Wotton says he has been using the week between matches wisely to work again on a few of the basics of football.

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The Worthing loss meant an end to a 13-game league cup run without a loss – but Torquay are still unbeaten at home, and will be big favourites as leaders of the National South against a team in 20th who have 23 points fewer than the Gulls.

Wotton said: “I think I picked the wrong team and the team that I did pick didn’t play well, it’s as simple as that really. It’s important to be disappointed by a result, of course, but it’s probably more important to forget about it very quickly, because we have been on a tremendous run in the league and we are still top of the league.

“So we have reflected on it, analysided it, and it is important now that we try and forget about it. In previous rounds against Truro and Horsham the team changed a little bit from the league. Cody Cooke got kicked from pillar to post against Truro and I am not going to ask him to play again in a short space of time because the risk was too great.

“I felt like Youngy needed a rest as well but listen, the players I put in are more than capable of going to Worthing and getting a result – it’s just that on the day the players that I chose didn’t play well Whether I picked the right team or the wrong team, in hindsight it was the wrong team, but it was still a good enough team, I felt, to get a result at Worthing. But that proved to not be the case.

"It was just a bad day. It’s just important that we don’t take a hangover from that into the Welling game. It’s important to almost blank it out completely. The Bishops Cleeve game was a big wake-up call for us and I am not saying this is a wake-up call, but I think it is definitely a chance this week – because we will have a good week of training – to reset and go over our fundamentals.

“Over Christmas the training is all a bit up in the air – the training schedule and the fixtures are always a bit up in the air. You do lose track of days and pretty much over Christmas all we have been doing is recovery sessions really. We have trained but we haven’t actually coached a great deal. So it is a good week to go over a few of the basics again.”

Midfielders Dylan Morgan and Jack Wood were cup-tied so they come back into contention for Saturday. Defender Jay Foulston was injured but could be back too. Right back Jordan Thomas is suspended.

Wotton said: “We missed a lot of players for Worthing – some forced and some on my part rested. Jay’s progressing OK and we will see how he is later on in the week, whether he has a chance of playing against Welling or not.”