Skipper Sam Morsy felt Town made mistakes both individually and collectively as the Blues twice let a two-goal lead slip in Saturday’s remarkable 4-4 draw at Charlton Athletic.
Town were ahead at 2-0 and 4-2 - Morsy the scorer of the fourth - but allowed the Addicks to claim a point from a game in which there were four goals in second-half injury time.
"Disappointing to take really,” the Egyptian international admitted. "Thought we were the better team in both halves, had a lot of chances. I don’t recall them having many chances.
"But I just think we make mistakes, individually and collectively for the goals, which is going to happen, it’s a long season.
"But when you score four goals away from home, usually that’s enough, but today it wasn’t.
"We’ll look at the goals, we’ll analyse the game and we’ll come back as a group and as a team and we’ll try and improve on it.”
Was he able to put his finger on on what happened at 4-2? "Correct me if I’m wrong, they have two chances and two goals. It can happen.
"There are things we can do to avoid it, but ultimately sometimes a drop of the ball, like the last one it loops over Chris [Walton]’s head.
"I don’t think he [George Dobson] tries to score, I think he just tries to put it back in an area and it somehow loops over his head, which I don’t think he’d be able to do again.
"Plenty of things to look at, it’s obviously very disappointing. We wanted to win the game. It feels like we’ve dropped two points there, definitely. But we’ll recover and we’ll go again.”
Clean sheets were a notable feature of Town under Kieran McKenna last season and earlier in this campaign but latterly, the Blues have conceded twice in their one away defeat at Plymouth, at Sheffield Wednesday having been two in front, as well as in the 3-2 victories over Portsmouth and Port Vale and then four at the Valley.
Quizzed on what he believes might have led to opposition sides scoring more goals of late, Morsy said: "Not really, to be honest. You’d probably usually look at how many chances we concede and I don’t think we’ve conceded any more than we had been doing.
"Just sometimes you have that spell. I can’t remember them having many chances today, to be honest, not many at all. I think they were really, really clinical.
"But if you keep doing that, you keep defending like that, if you’re limiting teams to only a few chances, chances are they’re not going to score many. But then sometimes teams are clinical and they do score the couple of chances they have.
"I think in general we’re not really under a massive amount of pressure. It didn’t feel like we were under a massive amount of pressure. They scored the chances they had. From their point of view they’ll be saying how clinical they were, from our point of view we’ll be saying, it’s minimal chances and a few goals.”
The game showed the highs and lows in football, from the celebrations in front of the 3,000-plus Town fans behind the goal to the frustration and disappointment at the end.
"That’s football, that’s why we all love it so much, the highs and the lows, I guess,” the 31-year-old reflected. "But it’s a long, long season, it’s about consistency. At the end of the season the most consistent teams will be the ones who get success.
"There’s plenty to work on, there were plenty good things, so we’ll look it analytically and we’ll go again.”
Morsy says once the dust has settled, there are some pluses to be taken from the game: "There were plenty of positives, I think we played good stuff, we had chances, a lot of chances.
"We should have had a penalty, we had various different things, various good things, but no one’s just going to give you three points and the goals we could have done a little bit better and that’s what we have to strive to do.”
In addition to the eight goals, the game also featured a fan whistling in order to disrupt Town attacks in the first half, while there were refereeing decisions questioned by both teams, Charlton manager Ben Garner trying to whip up his fans having been sent to the stands for protests towards referee Josh Smith.
"You’ve just got to stay focused on the pitch really, you don’t pay too much attention to that,” Morsy said when asked whether those factors were a distraction.
"The referee, I’m sure there will be decisions debated but you just have to deal with what you’re in control of really and we did that in getting four goals.
"Obviously we conceded four as well, but they’ll say it was good play for their goals as we’ll say it was good play for our goals. Like I said, no one’s going to give you anything, we’ve just got to keep improving.”
Garner called for improvements to refereeing in his post-match comments and Morsy was asked whether he agreed.
"I don’t know how the system works really,” the former Wigan, Middlesbrough and Chesterfield man admitted.
"Obviously it’s tough to take because he [Terell Thomas] saves the ball with his arm [in the incident which should have been a Town penalty in first-half injury time], it’s as clear as day, everyone sees it in the stadium.
"That is really, really disappointing but I don’t know how the refereeing system works. But that was a huge, huge error today.”"
Does there need to be investment in refereeing at this level so they can go full-time? "Of course that would help, if they were full-time that would help.”
Regarding the midfield battle with Dobson and former Blue Scott Fraser, he added: "Obviously we knew Scotty, Scotty’s a really good player, I think the other lad’s a good player as well. It was a good battle, but it felt like we were in control really with the chances and a lot of other things. It was a good battle, they’re good players.”
He says he had no problem adjusting to playing alongside Dom Ball with Lee Evans, who is out for a number of weeks with a knee injury, having been his regular partner for most of the season so far.
"Not really, we train a lot, we train hard and I thought we had a good partnership in there,” the Town captain said. "I thought we did well together, it clicked quite early.”
Despite the disappointment of not claiming all three points from such strong positions, the atmosphere at the end was very different from last December’s game at the Valley when there were confrontations between players and fans following a dismal 2-0 defeat in the wake of Paul Cook’s sacking.
"Massively, we’re a completely different team, a completely different club,” Morsy reflected. "When the dust settles, you’ll realise the progression we’ve had and there’s a lot more to go and and you’ve got to keep looking at the positives, keep working on things.
"No one’s going to be the finished article at this time of the season. You have to just keep progressing and that’s what we want to do, just keep improving. There are lots of good signs, lots of positive things.
"A seven-point week. Disappointing not to get nine but sometimes you take seven and you just move on.”
Town are on 37 points from their 17 matches having taken until January 22nd and the 2-1 victory over Accrington to reach that total last season.
"We’re a lot ahead of schedule, we’ve got players coming back in the next month or two,” Morsy continued. "Improving all the time and we’re just going to keep trying to improve to the end of the season, that’s the goal.”
And despite Saturday’s frustrations, the overall context is that the Blues are second in the table still three points ahead of Sheffield Wednesday in third and a point behind leaders Plymouth, who are in derby action at home to Exeter on Monday.
"We’re doing well, we’re consistent, we look strong,” Morsy reflected. "I think the performances up until this point have probably merited a couple more points on the board.
"But if you perform consistently it usually evens itself out, so we’ll just have to keep doing what we’re doing. Keep playing the way we’re playing and just keep trying to improve.”