Mark Robins was left “frustrated” after the Sky Blues fell to a 2-0 defeat against Preston North End at Deepdale.
The manager felt City had conceded two avoidable goals and had not took their chances, despite playing well for large spells of the game.
When asked for his thoughts after the final whistle, Robins admitted to feeling conflicted about his team’s performances.
“I feel frustrated and angry but there’s part of me that thinks we played some really good stuff and given the game away. We’ve got to stop giving goals away like we have done tonight, and we haven’t been like that for a long time.
“Tonight, unfortunately, we were on top in the game, we created a load of chances but looked like we wanted to try and score a perfect goal. When we try and create openings to get shot away. That’s one of the biggest things - they have to get a shot away.
“We’ve opened them up a number of times, they couldn’t live with us. We were playing some good stuff and gave them the goal which gave them sort of a foothold in it. We kept going and then we gave another poor goal away from a foul on the outside.
“You’ve got to have people to either tackle or block and win the ball. There wasn’t enough of that, certainly not enough of that. Other than that, we played some brilliant stuff, caused them all sorts of problems. So, I’m sort of really frustrated and angry but it’s a strange one because we should have won that game, it shouldn’t even have been a draw.”
Despite being impressed by some of his side’s build-up play, the manager was left disappointed that his side didn’t make the most of the chances they created throughout the game.
“You’re not going to score if you don’t shoot so we don’t discourage people from shooting. The whole point of football is to score goals and to stop them going in at the other end. We played some brilliant stuff to create those chances and it looks fine, it looks great and at times it’s breath-taking. When you’ve got the ball in and around the opponent’s box you have to shoot, you have to take a shot.
“If we’re going to play the way we’re playing, we have to score at the end of it. Even when we changed to the two strikers, we can’t stop playing, and we ended up going away from what we were doing and then still created some chances.
“Fankaty got a lot of the ball out wide, put some good balls into the penalty area but [Preston] defended really well, in terms of crosses they defended really well. They’ve got some good players, make no mistake about it, they’re a team with a lot of experienced players at this level and you can’t give them the goals that they had.”