Boss Roy Keane slammed his team’s second half performance as the Blues surrendered a 1-0 half-time lead to lose 3-1 at rock bottom Peterborough.
Keane said: "We live in the real world. We defend each other but when you have three thousand fans here to see you, you must be better.
"It is not good players that get you out of trouble, it is characters and in the last 25 minutes I never felt we were going to get back into it.
"I have defended the players this season as they have always given their all, but we died out in the second half and I need to put my finger on why tonight and we must do more.
"You can have 90% of the possession but if you don't score and don't defend set-pieces you will lose games.
"There is no hiding place. In any walk of life you have got to show some character and we had none."
The Blues boss felt a second first half goal would have settled the match in Town’s favour: "We got a foothold in the game but we didn't get that second goal that I think would have been enough to have won us the points.
"Their goal in the first minute of the second half changed the game. It was a crazy goal to give away. We had the kick-off, we didn't clear the ball, dived in for the challenge. I'm not sure it was a foul but you still have to defend the set-piece and we didn't do that.
"Their second goal was a good goal but the third was another set-piece and we have to be better than that.
"Credit to Peterborough, they took the game to us but our second half performance wasn't good enough. It was disappointing, frustrating - and a lot worse but you won't be able to print it!
"The last 20 minutes we lost that bit of spark and it looked as if we had played over the weekend and they had a few days off, not the other way round.
"I think we will be in the bottom three tomorrow night as other teams around us will pick up results.
"We had a fantastic following again but we let the fans down tonight and that's not acceptable. We have to make sure we bounce back on Saturday at Sheffield Wednesday."
Peterborough boss Jim Gannon made an important tactical change just after the half hour, taking off Craig Mackail-Smith, bringing on Reuben Reid and switching to a five-man midfield.
Gannon says he should have gone with that plan from the start: "I made a difficult decision to try and accommodate a certain player and I compromised my beliefs to get him in. I will never do that again.
"I was disappointed in myself as we looked poor in the first half an hour but I made the change and it was justified.
"Straight away Reuben gave us width and penetration and you could see signs from then that we would be more purposeful.
"We didn't show enough quality maybe but in the second half we had more tempo and certainly did enough.
"I just reminded them at the break about what we have been working on and we played my way after the break.
"I have learned a lot in my short time here and if we play like that for the majority of the remaining games then we will give ourselves a chance."