Boss Paul Lambert insists that until it's mathematically impossible no one is giving up on the fight against the drop despite the defeat to Reading extending the gap to safety to 12 points but admits staying up will be really hard with only 11 matches remaining.
"I thought the two goals were really poor,” he said reflecting on the game. "I thought we never dealt with them at all.
"In the first half, we had a great chance towards the end, Nolan, who I thought Nolan had a really good game, had a great chance but didn’t take it. One-nil down at half-time, as I said from a really poor goal.
"I thought in the second half we did everything we could to score, but the second goal was a really, really poor goal.
"We missed too many big chances. We’d a lot of chances and the goalkeeper’s made some good saves, we had some bad misses and I think that’s been the story of the whole time, in both boxes are crucial to you.”
Does he feel that following today’s loss and the distance to safety avoiding the drop into League One for the first time in 62 years is now too much of an ask?
"Time’s not on our side that’s for sure but until it’s mathematically impossible you never give in,”
"Your job is you’ve got to try and win games. It’s going to be really hard, really a lot of work, but you never give in, we’ve got too many fans that come and support us.
"We had incredible support behind us again and you feel for them. They’ve been absolutely brilliant since we’ve been in here.
"It’s not a normal situation, like I say every week, the way the supporters turn up and get behind us.
"The thing that annoys me is that we’re playing well, but both boxes, you’ve got to be more clinical than we are.”
Lambert says the double change at half-time, Cole Skuse and Gwion Edwards for Trevoh Chalobah and James Bree, Toto Nsiala having replaced the injured James Collins prior to the break, was more to do with the personnel than the back three system employed in the first half.
"What I did when I lost James Collins, it was a blow and I put Toto on,” he explained. "I thought Gwion with his legs and his energy on that side [would make an impression], so it wasn’t anything to do with the system, I wanted to change the personnel.
"Trevoh Chalobah was struggling with his thigh and for me Cole Skuse is a better midfielder in a three, and that’s why I changed.
"I thought Cole did really well, I thought Gwion made a big impact when he came on and I thought Toto had a good game, I thought he did well.”
Regarding Collins’s injury, he added: "I don’t know the extent of it, with the calf, I’m not sure how severe. We’ll have to assess him on Monday and see how he is.
"It wasn’t the hamstring [which had kept him out of the previous five games]. I’m not sure [whether it was the challenge earlier on]. I just saw him down there and I asked him, we just need to see how he is on Monday.”
Town, who lost striker Will Keane for six weeks with a hamstring injury during the Wigan match last week, continue to pick up injuries on an almost weekly basis and Lambert says he’s never known a situation where so many players are sidelined with long-term serious problems.
"I think I said on Thursday, Wardy a cruciate, Freddie a cruciate, young Ben Morris a cruciate, Ben Folami achilles, Tom Adeyemi’s been out for the best part of 15 months or whatever it is, Emyr Huws the same,” he listed.
"It’s an incredible long-term injury list to have. I don’t think I’ve been involved in a club where there have been as many long-term injuries, maybe one guy but not half a dozen.
"But you have to get through it, you have to get through these situations and hopefully you get pre-season where you can get everybody back fit.”
Given his lack of strikers, Lambert employed Teddy Bishop playing off Collin Quaner in the first half, although the midfielder struggled to make an impact until after the system switch,
"I think the kid’s got an incredible energy and is an incredible ball carrier,” he said. "I think the great thing about Bishop at the minute is that he’s training every day, he doesn’t miss training, now he’s starting to play game after game. I couldn’t play him last week because of his illness.
"But I think he’s going to be really good and I think Bish is a player that sometimes you have to give freedom to go and play because he’s very good at it and even today in the second half I thought he had a good game.”
The game was widely viewed as one Town had to win if they were going to have any chance of avoiding the drop. Asked how the mood in the dressing room is, he added: "It’s what you’d expect really. As I said, the two goals were really poor. Reading never really had many chances but they had their chances.
"The two goals were poor, really, really poor. We should have stopped the goals, the goals should never have occurred.
"A long ball for the first goal and the second goal there was never any danger, we had two-v-one at the back and we never dealt with it.”
Is it going to be hard to lift the team after that result? "You’re going to have that downbeat feeling when you lose a game, it’s normal.
"But you can’t let it manifest or it just progresses and progresses through and brings everybody down.
"As I said before, you try and analyse it for one day and you’ve got to let it go at certain times because you can’t keep beating people and being downbeat all the time, it just manifests.
"It’ll hurt no doubt, it’ll hurt for a couple of days but you get them back in next week and go again.”