Cambridge boss Money admits there will be changes for Hatters replay

With only a small squad at his disposal Money was forced to name a strong side as the U’s were held to a 2-2 draw at the Abbey Stadium in the initial tie on Saturday.

Speaking after the game, he said: “Even without Tuesday’s replay, we were going to be Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday for a significant period, so there’s no way you can play the same 11.

“And those that didn’t start today will start on Tuesday. We haven’t got anyone else we can use, so that’s it. We let (Liam) Hurst and Bobby-Joe (Taylor) play in the trophy for other clubs, we haven’t registered anyone from CRC before the original tie so we won’t be able to do that for the second tie, so we will select from that group and if we have 14 players, we have 14 players, that’s what it is.

“People need to recognise that’s where this football club is, the size in club I think today has been shown by the strengths in squads and the number of players people can call upon, but we are just proud that we are competing with that.”

The U’s have been busy in the transfer market this week, signing ex-Hatters striker Matthew Barnes-Homer on a free transfer from Forest Green Rovers and Luton nemesis Ashley Chambers from York City, who scored as a sub in Saturday’s draw.

Money said: “With Matthew coming in gives us 18. We’d like to bring (Josh) Gillies back which would give us 19.

“And we think that 19 is a strong group that can all come on the pitch and play.”

But he bemoaned how difficult it has been to improve his squad, adding: “I think there will be a lot said and written about the respective starting line-ups, but only four of our starting line-up have been regular this year and we’ve picked the team based on people who have needed the minutes the most and some real, real exciting things I think for the second half of the season have come out of today.

“(Tom) Elliott’s performance, Chambers’ performance, (Kevin) Roberts more minutes on the pitch, (Liam) Hughes back, (Ryan) Donaldson to come back, Barnes-Homer to add into the mix.

“We have a limited resource, everyone knows that. Our budget is what it is, it hasn’t improved (since the start of the season) and we have to be creative and let people go on loan to bring people in and the other issue of cashflow has been forgotten in all of this.

“We haven’t had the money from the cup game yet, it’s our first game at home since Boxing Day. We only have one more league game here in January, so when you are trying to strengthen and do things and cashflow is at zero, obviously it’s difficult to make the decisions that you would maybe like to.

“But that’s the environment that we have here, I think every manager takes the job knowing what the parameters are and that’s what our parameters are and up till now we’ve got on with it and coped and done well and I’m sure that will be the case going forward.”