Max Mitchell admitted to being totally "caught out" by Welwyn Garden City's performance in the opening Southern League Division One Central match.
The Citizens fell to a 3-0 loss at home to Walthamstow, Damaray Anyadike putting the Londoners ahead in the first half before Lucas Schreiber and Ben Ward-Cochrane wrapped things up after the break.
And it was a showing out of keeping with their form in pre-season.
The City boss said: "We never carried the momentum over from pre-season but pre-season is one thing.
"When you come into a competitive game against a really competitive opponent, something that was described to them fully before the match, you have to turn up.
"The minimum is you match it and we didn’t do that in all departments.
"We had a particular game plan and we asked certain players to do certain jobs in really important moments of the game and we didn’t do it.
"In all honesty I’m a little bit caught out by it because that is not us.
"We have done so much and we have been so much better I’m just disappointed."
City had enjoyed plenty of the ball in the first half but had failed to cause much concern for the Stow defence.
And Mitchell felt what positives there were fairly small and inconsequential.
"We never got going at all," he said. "We had good moments of possession but were really wasteful. We didn’t keep it well enough and tried to overdo it.
"When the play needed to be shorter, we tended to go longer when we shouldn’t and we looked very disjointed.
"I’ve told the players that when they’re good, I tell them they’re good and when they’re bad, I’ll tell them they’re bad and how they need to improve.
"That’s the biggest thing. For 24 hours we need to go away and think about it, see what areas we can improve individually and we’ll give them collective feedback once we see the footage.
"The good thing is another game comes round quickly in a season.
"I’ll look at it from a management perspective. It’s always a learning opportunity and it should be for the players too.
"It’s a long season. We’re here competing for 38 weeks and the games come thick and fast.
"We have to pick ourselves up."
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