Nigel, your side just didn’t really give up today…
No, I don’t expect them to either.
What was your assessment of the performance?
Committed, I thought we defended really well in the first half in terms of keeping a shape, a good shape, you can see the quality they’ve got so we needed to try and combat that. Getting an early goal gave us a situation to defend but unfortunately we gave the ball away too many times in the first half.
I think it was 14 times we turned the ball over when we had comfortable possession which means that we were defending for much longer. That was our problem but I also recognise that that is born out of playing a good team.
They’ve got a lot of players who have played in the Premier League before, they’ve got a big squad and lots of quality but we gave them a really good game today. There’s still things that we’re disappointed with of course.
You need the rub of the green but we certainly didn’t get that with the penalty decision.
Do you think it was a penalty, then?
Well, I’ve seen it from different angles and if we hear the term ‘a natural coming together’ again, my interpretation of the law is that defenders can’t touch a forward from behind an make physical contact.
It’s not a coming together because Chris [Martin] has touched the ball away from him. We’ve had one penalty all season and we’ve had so many decisions go against us, it’d be interesting to know why. I couldn’t give you an answer to that.
There was a stat earlier this season that City have the worst penalty record in Europe…
That was then! Extrapolate that for now, it’ll be much worse now.
I can’t say anything about it I’m afraid, the officials aren’t publicly accountable.
Have you seen the first goal back?
Again, I can’t see the point in commenting on stuff like that, I’ve seen it and it’s tight but there we go. My intention is not to come in here and make excuses. My intention is to try and recognise what was good and bad about the performance today and I thought we showed some good qualities today but we made too many unforced errors in possession.
We’ve conceded three more goals and that’s why we are in the position that we’re in, because we can’t keep enough clean sheets. We’ve proven that we can be a threat in terms of creating chances. That’s where we are.
In comparison with the reverse fixture, do you feel that there’s been progress since then?
Yeah. We were in the game today.
One thing you need to understand and well today is that physically they are up there at the top of the league, they are top of the league with physical stats. Not only do we play against a side today that are technically very, very capable, they’re very, very fit too. That’s a reflection of again the Premier League history.
It’s something that is a big difference between the leagues.
They’ve got Dembele coming off the bench and Todd Cantwell not even getting on…
Yeah well they’ll need that next year.
They’ll find next year that they’ve got it all on to be able to have a successful campaign and success would be to stay up.
That’s the difference in quality and Scott will know that. They are a club that have put themselves in a position where people are thinking of them as a Premier League side, they’ve had a good 10-12 years and it’s a good story.
Cundy said before the game that this would be the biggest test of his career, what did you think of his performance?
Robbie is still making that adjustment, he’s only really been in the side for a few weeks and that’s a big ask.
He’s made a good contribution and so again, it’s another player that we’ve got who this is their first experience of the Championship, some of the players are doing exceptionally well and they’re still disappointed in there that we were unable to take something from the game.
There’s more positives today than there are negatives.
Chris Martin’s big chance to make it 2-2 felt like a big moment in the game…
Yeah. That’s always going to be the difference in scorelines between any team, I don’t know if you saw the Liverpool Vs Watford game before, but Watford could have scored 30 seconds before Liverpool got the first goal and that’s the fine line that we’re talking about.
If players are committed to the performance then you’ve always got a chance of getting something. I would imagine their dugout was relatively please when the final whistle went because anything can happen.
We’re disappointed, but I’m also realistic about the situation too.
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