Boss Kieran McKenna has been reflecting at length on his side having conceded late goals in a number of matches this season but says the circumstances weren’t all the same, although knows the Blues will have to improve their game management to claim more points from tight games.

Town have won only once this season since returning to the Premier League, 2-1 at Tottenham a month ago, came close to a second victory - and their first home win - on Sunday when they were only three minutes plus injury time away from beating AFC Bournemouth, the Cherries eventually netting twice in the dying minutes to grab the three points.

That followed the game against Leicester prior to the Tottenham match in which the Foxes scored similarly late on to draw, while at Brentford, the Bees struck equally deep in injury time to deny the Blues a hard-fought point.

Town have, over the course of the season, dropped 15 points from winning positions, the joint-most in the division alongside Fulham, a figure which hadn’t gone unnoticed by manager Kieran McKenna, although he feels that number needs contextualising.

“I've seen the stat that we've conceded a lot of points from winning positions,” he said. “And that's a double-edged statistic because, in some aspects, it means you've started games well. 

“I think when you're at the bottom end of the table, you can find a lot of statistics [like that] because some of those games, we scored after four minutes against Man City, which very few teams do, we took the lead against Aston Villa, but then they scored two goals back in quick succession, and we actually came back to get points. 

“So I think the reality is, from my perspective and the group's perspective, we've had three games of the 15, the Bournemouth game, the Leicester game and the Brentford game, where we've conceded goals in the very last minutes that have cost us points.

“Brentford, a 97th-minute goal, has turned one point into none. Leicester, a 95th-minute goal has turned three points into one. And you can certainly argue on Saturday that very close to the 90-minute a goal has meant we went from three points to zero. 

“That's six points that we don't want to lose. And I think from an outside perspective, the opinion of where we're at as a team, as a group, would be very, very different with those six points. 

“On the other hand, we scored a late goal against Southampton that turned a loss into a draw, so we can probably take one back.

“I think it's very important that we turn those margins, there's no doubt about it. For us, we know we're going to be in tight games if we do very well and coming out on top in tight games is something that we're going to have to do really well. 

“And we've done that terrifically, certainly last season, and now it's a challenge to do it in the Premier League.

“And the reasons why we've conceded those late goals, in a pretty small sample, I think you can say Leicester and Brentford, we're playing with 10 men twice, Leicester, in my opinion, wrongly, Brentford, at best questionable. Saturday was the first time that we’ve conceded a late goal with 11 players on the pitch.

“So, I think you can always read into a very small sample, but the reality is our game management can improve and we still have to improve it over the course of the season. 

“Now, that's a few things. I think it's a new group of players. I think you have to go through some of these experiences. We went through them with largely the same group through League One and in the Championship from my first six months here, where we conceded a lot of late goals, didn't score many late goals, and a little bit even in the season we got promoted.

“But we lived through those experiences, we developed a real sort of shared understanding of what we have to do in each situation in the game.

“And that makes you very, very good at managing games late on and we sort of built that. We're doing it now with a lot of new players in the group at a much, much harder level, where the opposition have fantastic individual quality on the substitutes’ bench every week. 

“So, it makes it a lot harder, but it's a process that we're working on. I think the Leicester and Brentford late goals against us, although we were playing with 10 men correctly or incorrectly, there were game management issues that we could have done better in both of those instances. 

“On Saturday, I actually think our game management was pretty good. If you look up from the 60th minute to when they scored in the 87th minute, we looked like the much more likely team to score. We had more shots than the opposition, we had more touches in their box. We were a threat and we looked like we could go and get the second goal. And really, it was an individual moment that wasn't in the flow of the game, in my opinion, at that stage, for the goal. 

“Probably a long answer. There's a lot of different aspects to it. It's easy to put one statistic out there. It's never as simple as that. The reality is, we know we've had three games this season where we've conceded late goals that have cost us. That hurts. It's three games too many. But there's a lot of context behind that.

“In two of the games, we've had 10 men and I’d say it's part of bringing a new team together. One of the biggest parts, to be honest, is game management and getting a real shared understanding of every player on the pitch. Every substitute comes on the pitch of what's pivotal in the late stages of a game, according to how the game is.

“And that's something that we've done really well. That's something that we're trying to build with a new group of players now.”

Why does he think so many late goals are scored in general? “I don't know if there is a bigger trend. I think we scored the most late goals possibly in Europe over the last two years and now have conceded the most. Maybe that has something to do with the change of divisions.

“I think the five-subs rule changed the dynamic of the game. We’ve used that massively to our advantage over the last couple of seasons. We try and use it to our advantage now, but it's a challenge with the level.

“For example, in the Bournemouth game, they're a team who use the fact that they have eight, nine forwards on the bench really well, and they're all interchangeable in position, and they can all come on the pitch fresh. 

“So I think the five-substitute rule probably has made some aspect on that. Other than that, I can only focus on the reasons for us and the challenges for us, and those are the things we spoke about.”

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