Terry McPhillips: My Blackpool team will dust themselves down fast for Arsenal

But there is no time to rest for Blackpool, who face the Gunners at the Emirates Stadium in Wednesday’s last-16 tie.

McPhillips said: “We’ll dust ourselves down and go again for what is a good occasion on Wednesday. We’ll have a right good go. We’ve got nothing to lose.

“It’s football. We’ll try to win every game if we can, but if we can’t we’ll try to draw them.

“We haven’t managed to do either of those (against Fleetwood) but we’ve got a good tie against Arsenal.

“We’ll get over this game and look forward to that one, and then it’s back to the league next Saturday against Bristol Rovers.”

Saturday’s defeat was Blackpool’s first-ever against their Fylde coast neighbours in seven competitive meetings (five in League One and two in the FA Cup).

Pool twice cut the deficit to one goal but can have no real complaints over the result, which brought an end to their impressive 11-game unbeaten run.

Manager McPhillips added: “We knew how desperate they were to beat us for the first time.

“They made no secret of that, so we expected them to come out of the traps but I expected our lads to do better than they did.

“Whether we were looking ahead to the game on Wednesday, I don’t know the answer.

“What I do know is we always get a response and we did respond. We did better at the end of the first half and in the second half.

“Did we do enough with that response, like we did against Bradford? No, we didn’t.

“After going 2-0 down against Bradford we were fantastic.

“We changed the shape towards the end and I was hoping we’d play a little bit more football but we didn’t really.

“We just kept asking questions without creating a great chance.

“It’s disappointing the run is over but we will dust ourselves down and go again.”

Despite the result, McPhillips was pleased that his side managed to stay in the game, though he admits they didn’t quite do enough.

“The lads always battle – we’ve been in every game,” he added.

“It’s our second league defeat. The last one was Portsmouth and in that game we fought to the end.

“They always do, they’re good lads, but we’ve just not been our usual selves here.”