John Toshack believes his young Wales side can bounce back from their five-goal mauling in Cardiff at the weekend.
The Wales boss admits he is now attempting to boost confidence ahead of Wednesday's second match of the Euro 2008 qualifying double-header against buoyant Cyprus at the Millennium Stadium.
One boost for Toshack is that skipper Craig Bellamy will not have to face a common assault charge this week.
He was due at Cardiff magistrates court today but at a preliminary hearing the prosecution asked for an adjournment to study new medical evidence.
There will now be another hearing on Friday where a new date will be agreed for the trial, already postponed twice.
That still leaves the charge - which he denies - hanging over Bellamy, but at least he will be able to concentrate now on football this week and Wales' needs.
And Toshack is looking for leadership from his new skipper as well as a show of character from his young players.
He said: 'I am not too worried about them, the youngsters will go in again against Cyprus. But we hope to eliminate the lapses in concentration which have cost us. We have talked to all of them, they have done okay in big matches before this so we have to hope they can learn from a few things that happened.'
Toshack is likely to keep faith with youngsters Rob Edwards, Richard Duffy, Gareth Bale and Lewin Nyatanga, saying: 'I don't think it helps taking them out of the firing line. The main problem is that some of them have not had too much football with their clubs. We thought we could get away with it, maybe now I'm not so sure.
'If you look at the alternatives that we have, there are not that many and I believe in these players. They are young to be going in at this level but I am sure they do have a bright international future.
'We need to sort out a few things, defensively, that went wrong. Sometimes they push forward too soon in their eagerness to do well, so we need more patience. We have had a couple of tough days; I certainly have. It was very painful to lose at home like that. We have looked, particularly, at the first half and what went wrong.'
He added: 'But if you make individual mistakes like that you are going to lose. And we are not making good use of our possession, which was far greater than Slovakia's throughout. We are having difficulty scoring goals, but we've trained hard again and we must pick ourselves up.
'The Slovakians were well beaten by the Czechs earlier in the group and they bounced back against us. Cyprus were hammered by six by Slovakia and bounced back to hit the Irish with five. Now we have been well beaten and we must bounce back against Cyprus.
'But Cyprus will be confident, they have come back from conceding six to knock in five themselves. They will not be easy opposition.'
