Roy McFarland revealed that a number of last night's team changes were forced on him by various illnesses and injuries.

He named a team of youths and reserves to face a full-strength Barnet who are currently leading Division Three, with only veteran defender Clive Wilson (right) retaining his place from the weekend's victory at Wrexham. England Under 18 international Adam Tann made his debut at right back and the scratch side put in a good performance for most of the game, but McFarland revealed he had to use a few more fringe players than he might have originally planned:

"As much as we wanted to win the match, there was little choice but to make all the changes," he told the Cambridge Evening News. "We had Martin Butler and Martin McNeil suspended, and a long list of illness and injuries. Trevor Benjamin has a bad cold, Ian Ashbee had to be sent home from training yesterday when he showed symptoms and Neil Mustoe has an ankle injury."

He added, "I had to think about the very important game at Reading on Saturday, and also we needed to see some of the fringe players in a competitive match. It was very disappointing to lose the game, but we looked all right for about an hour. We had other illness problems though, with Ben Chenery and Steve Guinan suffering later on in the match."

It was just past the hour when U's nemesis Ken Charlery joined the fray from the bench and the man who always seems to score against us turned the game.

McFarland continued, "I thought we could have gone on to make it 2-0 at one stage, which probably would have won it, but we tightened up, started giving the ball away, and the quality from set-pieces was poor. We looked quite a bit better than Barnet in the first half, but Ken Charlery, who's always a handful, gave them a lift when he came on as substitute."

Barnet manager John Still confirmed that sending Charlery on after 62 minutes gave his side the boost they needed: "We were trying some things and struggled to get into the match before the break," he told the CEN. "Cambridge made a lot of changes, but you sometimes have to take the opportunity of doing that in these games.

"We wanted to win it, though. It's not everybody's favourite competition, but I've never heard a manager who's got to Wembley complaining about it."