Winger Ryan Fraser has revealed that his 86th minute equaliser during Saturday’s 2-2 home draw with Bristol City owed much to work on the training ground with assistant manager Terry Connor.
Fraser (pictured above scoring the goal) broke into the box and slammed Freddie Sears’s low right-wing cross into the net to level.
"We’ve been doing it all week,” Fraser said after the match. "TC has been running it into us about running across the six-yard box. I never do it, he told me to do it and it’s got me a goal, which is really nice.
"Maybe three or four days this week he’s been getting us to run in the six-yard box with different movements and things like that and today, [it was] somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ve done it and it got us a goal. Searsy’s ball was perfect and it was good to score.”
Regarding the game overall, Fraser added: "You can look at it both ways. We didn’t start off too well but we came into the game and then dominated it, we got Chambo’s goal and we got there and felt ‘Right, this is us’.
"They then got their two quick goals and it put a downer on it, but we showed some character to get the goal at the end. They sat back and made it hard for us and we kept plugging away.
"At half-time we said we knew we’d made a slow start but about 10 or 15 minutes in we had dominated the game and they couldn’t get out their half. We were playing some very good football.
"We wanted to go out in the second half and play the way we did at the end of the first, we did that and got the goal but we lost that little bit of belief and they got their goals.”
The Scotland U21 international says the Robins’ first goal was impossible for keeper Dean Gerken to stop: "I was right behind it and the amount of deflections it took I felt sorry for Gerks because he could do nothing about it.
"It’s one of those bits of bad luck and the second was disappointing too, but we’ll look at them and see where we go.”
The Blues have dropped to seventh having been top at the end of August but Fraser points out that it’s only goal difference which separates Town and Reading in third.
"Third to seventh are on the same amount of points and if we go to Blackburn and get three points we’re right up there going into the international break,” the on-loan AFC Bournemouth man continued.
"We’re going to have a big week of training now, we’ve had Tuesday-Saturday most weeks this season and haven’t been able to focus on the game ahead, but now we have that time.
"It’s Saturday-Tuesday and you don’t feel like you have time to focus on the next game, you have one day maybe to focus on the next game and it’s not great.
"We’re going to have five or six days of hard graft training now to get it into our heads how we’re going to play so we’ll be nice and fresh.”
Meanwhile, it’s emerged that Fraser wasn't eligible to win the Football League Young Player of the Month award he picked up for August, at least not under the criteria outlined by the Football League when he won it.
The story announcing that he had won the award on their website earlier this month said: "To be eligible the player must be either under 21 years of age or be playing in the season during which he turns 21.”
Fraser, however, was 21 in February. The Football League, who have denied any wrong-doing and have no plans to reclaim the award, subsequently amended the story to the vaguer "young player who has made the most significant contribution and impact in first-team football”.
Elsewhere, the Blues’ U21s are in action away against Huddersfield Town at their PPG Canalside training ground this afternoon (KO 1pm).