Mark Robins gave his thoughts on a disappointing afternoon at St Andrew’s.
City fell to a 3-0 defeat in Championship action, with goals coming from Ivan Sunjic, Jay Stansfield and a Bobby Thomas own goal.
Speaking after the final whistle, Robins gave his reaction as he dissected the afternoon’s events.
Reflecting on the game…
“We were second best to everything. When they’re fighting for their lives at the bottom of the division, you know it’s going to be a difficult game.
When we’re trying to get into the play offs you expect a response, and we didn’t have enough of a response.”
Start to the game…
“I thought we started ok, we had one or two decent openings when Milan had space down the right-hand side, just dragged his shots wide.
The way we think and the way we made mistakes from a tactical point of view, was foreign to me.
It looked to all intense and purposes that they were first and second to the ball and got first contact on things, there was nothing and I could have taken everyone off at half-time, it was a non-performance.”
Conceding the first goal…
“We went a goal down to another own goal, but we didn’t get tight enough to the crosser allowing the cross to come in and were in poor positions.
We’re a goal down and their tails are up and then Haji has a chance to score and does everything right, but it just comes back off the crossbar and if that goes in then the mood changes in the stadium.
The moments didn’t come for us today and they end up getting a second, but we know we’re still in the game if we can change the momentum a bit, but we have to try and build that, and we didn’t give ourselves any chance to do it.”
Triple change at half-time…
“Second half I made some changes, and it gave us a little bit of a lift and we ended up pinning them in for five or ten minutes and we looked like we could get something.
We didn’t get the crowd involved in the game at all which is a massive disappointment and it just felt really flat and that’s the concern and we need to get ourselves ready to go again.”
Asked if the FA Cup was a distraction…
“It surely can’t be. The way they’re going into tackles, you have to respond otherwise you’re going to get injured, and I thought we were second best.
It looked lethargic and it looks like that when you’re not thinking properly, we made some really strange decisions where we follow people into areas that isn’t their job and it opens things up for them.
It wasn’t what we needed, it was exactly what they wanted, and we played into their hands.
We didn’t work hard enough, and I think that’s the least we’ve run in a game and that’s not good enough.
I’m not looking for excuses, I’m looking for reasons for it but it’s going to take me some time to get through it because that performance wasn’t what we needed at this stage of the season or any stage.”
