Sky Blues Under-23s Head Coach Luke Tisdale spoke of his frustration after his side were held to a goalless draw against Barnsley.
The Tykes set-up to thwart Tisdale’s side and despite a dominant second half performance, the Sky Blues couldn’t break down their opposition.
The point means City remain top of the Northern section of the Professional Development League; four points clear of Sheffield United in second.
“It was very frustrating.” Tisdale said.
“I thought first half we let them control the game after we had a 15/20 minute spell.
“They wrestled back possession from us and then we had to sit in an defend for 25 minutes which is not really what we’ve been doing in games this season.
“Then second half, I thought we would get the goal that a lot of our build up play deserved, but we just lacked that bit of quality around the penalty area, which hasn’t been like us this season.
“We dominated the ball second half, but we just couldn’t unlock them and their ‘keeper has made some good saves and ultimately it just hasn’t fallen for us today, but I can’t fault their efforts.”
Tisdale was aware of the tactics which would be deployed by Barnsley, after working on their style f play heading into the game.
“They play very similar to the way their first team play and we had prepared for that in our training sessions before the game and we’d worked on where we could try and hurt them.
“I thought we did what we had worked on well and we nearly got there, breaking them down at times, but we didn’t and at the end of the day, if you can’t win it’s important you don’t lose and we’ve done that and we’ve kept a clean sheet which is positive.”
After dominating the Northern section of the PDL this season, teams have become wary of the attacking threat Tisdale’s side possess.
Building a commanding lead at the top of the division, Tisdale is noticing the defensive shift in mentality from teams playing against his sides.
“There’s a sense of frustration that we didn’t come away with three points because I felt it was there for us.
“It’s another point to our overall tally, but it’s hard to not feel that we’ve dropped two points, but credit to Barnsley because they stopped us playing our game and I think that’s going to happen to us more and more in the final six games.
“Teams know we score plenty of goals and they’re going to want to stop that and we have to prepare for it and keep going and find a way to unlock defenses.”