Neil Thompson spoke of Wednesday “falling short” over two games in four days in rhe aftermath of today’s vital 1-0 bottom-of-the-table home defeat to Birmingham.
The reverse sees us drop back down to 23rd place in the Championship while Birmingham lift themselves into the safety zone and, coming after another 1-0 defeat at Stoke in midweek, caretaker boss Thompson said: “We fell short of where we need to be in both games, everybody, and that impacts on the results.”
On today’s performance, he said: “It was a scrappy first half and we played the ball too long. Maybe do that for the first five or ten minutes to get them to drop off and then you have room to play but we didn’t go get on the ball and that was a disappointment.
“In the first half we weren’t brave enough in possession to get on the ball.”
Thompson said the sending off of Liam Shaw early in the second half changed the game and, talking about the tackle that led to his second yellow card, he added: “When you’re on a yellow you run the risk with a tackle. Years ago that would have been a tackle and just a throw-in to Birmingham but nowadays you can’t leave the ground, you’re deemed to be out of control.
“Liam’s absolutely devastated that he’s got sent off.”
On the second half display, the stand-in boss said: “I thought we dug deep, changed our system a couple of times and had a bit of a go. We had one or two opportunities to get back on terms but it was not to be and it’s been a disappointing week all round.”