Mark Robins felt the scoreline was “harsh” after the Sky Blues lost 4-1 to Bournemouth despite producing a solid performance at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
City fell behind within one minute before Matty James superb free-kick restored parity, only for further strikes from Arnaut Danjuma, David Brooks and Dominic Solanke to take the game away from the Sky Blues.
The manager admitted it was a disappointing result but was pleased with the heart his side showed after going behind in the opening minute.
Robins said: “You’ve got to look at the result in context, if we’re at full tilt and at full confidence away from home it’s always a tough game here, they’ve tried to execute a game plan as best as they possibly could do.
“We get punished after 30 seconds which is a joke but I can’t be too critical because of what we have out on the pitch, we’ve got to deal with things better at times, whilst it’s a disappointment, I think the scoreline is very harsh.
“We didn’t lose heart, we got back into it and almost immediately got back on level terms again which was good, the second goal against us was a blow but we were still in the game at half time and had a chance of doing something.
“Around the hour mark we started to tire because mentally it’s a tough game and when they fancy it, they’ve got top players, they can take the game away from you really quickly because of the movements and the way they move the ball.
“We’d done okay without really being able to get a proper foothold in the game because of the quality that they’ve got.”
Robins did however feel his side afforded the Cherries too much space in-behind the Sky Blues defence and urged his team to grab a foothold in the game rather than sitting off.
“You can’t give them space in-behind and we’ve just done that a couple of times too many, they want you to chase the game, their pace is miles more than our space.
“We were trying to deny them space and then break off them, we’ve had a couple of brilliant chances at 1-1, Tyler Walker’s almost had a goal and Leo Ostigard had a header that he threw his head at.
“The only disappointment for me is that we tend to sit off from time-to-time when we can go and get on the front foot and also the set-play delivery and set plays that we’ve practiced don’t resemble what we’ve done the day before, that’s the biggest criticism that I’ve got.
“This is a really tough game, we came up against a team that fancied it today and they need to pick some points up to get into the play-offs, we need to pick points up for other reasons, this isn’t the end of the world, the scoreline is harsh, we have to learn from this and move on.”