PHIL Brown takes his Southend United team to Rochdale tonight, harbouring no regrets about the selections he made in Sunday’s JPT final against Crewe Alexandra.

Brown was criticised for his starting line-up at Wembley Stadium which included Bilel Mohsni in central midfield and Anthony Straker on the left wing.

But the former Hull City stands by his decisions, despite suffering a 2-0 defeat against the Railwaymen.

“I have no regrets about the team I picked because I don’t think you can,” said Brown.

“You can’t judge yourself on hindsight manager. You pick what you think is right and if that works then great but if it doesn’t then you go back to the drawing board and try something else.

“With regards to Bilel I thought he did well at Bradford next to Tam (Mkandawire), although they weren’t as creative as I would’ve liked in the next game against Fleetwood.

“I thought they would be suited to playing on the massive Wembley pitch and play some good football so in hindsight maybe that was the wrong decision and it’s something we’ll look to readdress in the next five games.”

As a result, Mohsni could well miss on tonight’s match at Rochdale, with Marc Laird and Mickey Spillane both available again for selection in the centre of the park after being cup-tied for Sunday’s final.

Brown also has Matthew Lund to call upon in that position but it remains to be seen if Brown decides to change the back four.

Last season’s player of the year Mark Phillips was left on the bench for the clash against Crewe and the Blues boss has now confirmed the decision was not done to concerns about the centre-back’s fitness.

“I can’t make that the reason after picking Chris Barker because he got a shout after eight games,” said Brown.

“The problem I had was that I had only seen Mark and Luke Prosser play once and Ryan Cresswell twice.

“I had to pick two from those three but it was certainly nothing personal against Mark. I know what he’s done for this football club in the past few years and he has a big part to play in the matches we still have coming up.”

Brown added that Barker would be fit to play for the second time in the space of four days but is expecting another difficult game against Rochdale.

“It will be a real come down from being at Wembley at the weekend but they’re a good side and they had a great win at Fleetwood in their last game,” said Brown.

“That shows how difficult this game will be but we can’t be feeling sorry for ourselves after losing the cup final and we need to move on the next challenge now which is trying to make the play-offs.