IT'S becoming harder to fathom this Worcester City side by the week.

One step forwards, three steps sideways and two steps back seems to be the pattern as they stumble from one match to the next scaling new heights for inconsistency.

Just when they seem to make a semblance of progress, such as the gutsy victory at Eastbourne, the players self-destruct to serve up a Dr Martens League Cup display against Sutton Coldfield Town that had a few supporters heading for the exit before full time had even ended.

Carl Heeley wasn't impressed either and didn't pull any punches in his assessment of City's performance against Sutton.

"We made hard work of it but we should give Sutton credit they made it difficult for us and worked hard," Heeley said.

"But we have to show more than we did. We have to have the brains to break things down and have a little bit of variation to cause problems."

"I've no idea why we played so badly. These games are difficult and your approach has to be spot on," he added.

"Sutton raised their game more than us but that should be no excuse. We've been around a long time and should be professional enough to get round it.

"We were disappointed in what we created in the game as a whole but we've had to score the penalties to go through and at the end of the day have done that."

City have, of course, enjoyed penalty shoot-out success before in the Dr Martens League Cup - three years ago against Tamworth in the second round, when they went on to win in the final against Saturday's league opponents Crawley.

Heeley underlines the importance of a good run in the league cup. "It is a critical for us after going out of both FA competitions and we're in this to win it," he said.

"It's not to give fringe players a game, if they get a game they are in it to keep the shirt but we are in this to win the cup. Let's hope history repeats itself because the last time we beat Tamworth on penalties we went all the way to win it so it might be a good omen for us."

Meanwhile Mark Owen was adamant he was never taking another penalty after missing from the spot in Monday night's penalty shoot-out against Sutton.

It was his third miss of the season following blips against West Bromwich Albion in pre-season and Weston three weeks ago.

Manager John Barton recently revealed he was going to have a discussion about the subject because Darren Middleton had also missed from the spot.

City's boss has still to nominate a new penalty taker but judging by his reaction after Leon Kelly's excellent strike I would not be surprised to see him take the next one awarded to City.