Nigel Pearson admitted his side were second best throughout as Bristol City were outplayed on a difficult afternoon at Nottingham Forest.
Two goals either side of half-time ensured the visitors stretched their winless run away from home to 11 matches as The Robins registered just one shot on target.
City were never in the contest and had goalkeeper Dan Bentley to thank for keeping the score at two with a series of brilliant saves in both halves.
Incredibly frustrated at the full-time whistle with the side's performance, Pearson admitted his players failed to produce what they had worked on in the week and could have no complaints with the result.
He said: "We were second best. Second best in all departments. We were miles off it today. We made bad decisions and couldn’t pass the ball in midfield, consequently, we didn’t create anything.
"We made too many mistakes in the second half too. They didn’t have to play at full tilt to beat us because we had too many players having an off-day.
"We didn’t do what we talked about doing and when you’ve got players who make unforced errors and you can see that it affects their own confidence and the confidence of their teammates, we had a bad day, simple."
When quizzed specifically on what exactly they failed to implement what they had talked about in the build-up, Pearson bluntly responded: "We didn’t pass the ball in the areas that we talked about.
"We didn’t have many positives really today. I don’t very often say that collectively we were second best but we were for almost the entirety today."
Despite the result and performance, a potential injury to Tomas Kalas was a further blow, particularly with City's threadbare options at the back with Rob Atkinson still sidelined.
City were forced to finish the game with 10 men when the Czech international came off towards the end but Pearson couldn't provide any update on whether the injury was serious although eased fears of a potential knock to Andi Weimann.
"I don’t know how serious it is." He added. "He couldn’t carry on. It’s just a knock.
"He couldn’t carry on so it’s not just precautionary. He’s got something but I don’t know what. He (Weimann) just got kicked, he’s alright, he’s fine."
Bentley was by far City's best player on the pitch and continued his impressive run of form since returning to the starting line-up in Max O'Leary's absence.
The captain made a string of terrific saves to ensure City had a fighting chance of a result as Pearson praised his goalkeeper's performance.
He said: "Yeah, he was one of our brighter performers. There weren’t too many but he did okay. Robbie Cundy did okay when he went on.
"Jay [Dasilva] did okay at left wingback. We didn’t have many positives really today. I don’t very often say that collectively we were second best but we were for almost the entirety today.
"When you look at games that we’ve been beaten, Swansea away we outplayed them for 70 minutes or we were on top and playing well. Today we were just miles off it."
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