An angry Mick McCarthy felt the Blues let Bristol City off the hook after their 2-1 defeat at Ashton Gate. Ex-Town striker Jon Stead netted in the final minute to seal a victory for the Robins when the Blues should have gone in 2-0 in front at the break.
McCarthy pulled no punches after the game: "Livid, pissed off, annoyed, angry, disappointed. We let them off the hook, we should have won the game.”
He added: "If I wasn’t angry after that… and I really should be delighted by the performance in the main, but I’m not because we lost the game.
"Results determine how I feel over the weekend and I’m going to feel pretty pissed off.”
The result dropped Town to 21st with Birmingham and Sheffield Wednesday both winning away. The bottom three sides, Peterborough, Barnsley and Bristol City all have a game in hand over the Blues.
McCarthy believes his team should find themselves in a much healthier position this evening: "I think we’ve had the best of the chances in the game, but we’ve lost it, so there’s no point in me talking about what might have been.
"What has happened is that we’ve been beaten in the game and I see the others around us have won, which makes it harder still.”
Having gone ahead via Daryl Murphy, Town should have gone 2-0 in front when Lee Martin missed a golden opportunity from a McGoldrck cross, an incident McCarthy thought gave the home team a boost.
"Certainly, that gave them a lift coming out for the second half,” he said. "We should have been 2-0 up, there’s no question about that.
"And the goal we conceded just after half-time was awful, Ã la [the game at] Aston Villa. They’ll look it as a great goal by them, but it shouldn’t happen and we’ve let the right off the hook at the end of the game. We’ve got three defenders marking two, it shouldn’t happen, it was awful.”
The Blues boss admitted that he’s concerned that his team have a tendency to let teams off the hook and knows what they have to do to avoid similar situations from occurring again: "We make sure that we don’t get out of position, that’s all.
"We had a great chance to win the game with Lee,” he added. "But one ball up the middle has taken three of our defenders out.”
Bristol City’s winning goalscorer Stead, who played for McCarthy at Sunderland, was one of a number of players the Blues boss felt was out to impress new Robins manager Sean O’Driscoll: "They had a few with a point to prove.
"Steven Davies came on and played very well having lost Ryan Taylor up front. I thought he played well and Jon Stead had a point to prove.
"They’ve had their noses out of joint. A new manager - does it have an effect? Quite clearly it does, but it has an effect if you let them off the hook in the first place, which we did.
"It wouldn’t have mattered who had come on to the pitch if we’d defended the first. And if we’d put the second one in when we should have done, it wouldn’t have mattered, but all that’s hypothetical now.”
He says he may be able to take positives from the game later on down the line — strikers David McGoldrick and Daryl Murphy combined well — but not in the immediate aftermath of the game: "Of course there will be [positives], but that’s not for this moment in time.
"You’re asking me how I feel and everything else is a silver lining on what is a pretty dark horrible cloud on my head at the minute.”
As we go into the final week of the transfer window, McCarthy says there are deals for potential additions to his squad currently ongoing: "Yes, let’s see what happens.”
Bristol City boss Sean O’Driscoll was delighted with his team’s victory: "It’s always nice to get off the mark at home when you come to a new team.
"We weathered a bit of a storm and changed things tactically and I’m delighted with the attitude and character the players showed more than anything else.”