Coventry City manager Steven Pressley labels performance in defeat to Tranmere as unacceptable
Coventry City manager Steven Pressley labelled his side's performance as 'not good enough' after they suffered a 3-1 defeat to Tranmere Rovers at Prenton Park.
It is the third successive defeat in the league for the Sky Blues after a penalty from Ryna Lowe, a Conor Thomas own goal and one more from Jake Kirby effectively wrapped up the game for the hosts before loanee Michael Petrasso got one back for City.
Pressley said: "My assessment was that it was just not good enough. We have to come to places like this and win. I've said to to the players that up until the last three weeks they had been receiving plaudits for the performances, for the style of play, plaudits for most aspects of our game .
"It's great when things are going well for you but the measure of players is how you react to advertsity and how you react to setbacks and today there were several players that let us down in that respect.
"I can accept mistakes, I can accept bad passes but what I can't accept is a lack of willingness to work hard whether we're winning or losing, whether it's 4-0 or 1-0 I can't accept that and the players have been made clear in no uncertain terms about that.
"That's three consecutive defeats now and we need to show a good mentality but we also have to understand that results and performances like that are unacceptable. That's also for the manner that we're losing goals. We work hard on our defensive strategy and we cannot concede goals like we have today if we want to be a successful team.
"Yes there's challenges, we're without strikers but that is not an excuse for today's performance. We have to show that we can manager setbacks. Things are always going to get tough but this is our biggest testing period and we have to show the stomach for it."
Pressley added that one positive to come out of the afternoon in Merseyside were the performances of loan signing Petrasso and substitute Mark Marshall who linked up for City's only goal.
"I thought Michael worked extremely hard throughout the game and deserved his goal and Mark looked like he was going to make things happen for us. He took players on in the wide areas and it was a great delivery for Michael's goal so I'm pleased with the way they both tried to affect the game."