INTERVIEW: Mark Robins looks back at Bristol City defeat and provides Jamie Allen update
City fell to a 1-0 defeat to Bristol City…
Mark Robins took the positives from City’s performance against Bristol City at Ashton Gate, but spoke of his disappointment to not come away with anything.
City dominated the game in the opening 45 minutes, but fell behind against the run of play when Rob Dickie headed home.
The Sky Blues were unable to get back into the game, as they slipped to a narrow defeat against the Robins.
Speaking after the final whistle, Mark Robins confirmed Jamie Allen missed the game through a calf injury and gave his thoughts on the 1-0 defeat.
Reflecting on the game…
“Well, I’m disappointed with the scoreline, but that’s all I’m disappointed with.
“I think the performance was absolutely top draw, and I think the only thing we didn’t do is take one of those chances. When you take one of those chances, the game is totally different and that’s the disappointment.
“Whether we like it or not, whether anybody likes it or not, we are a work in progress. This is the Championship in a nutshell, but we’ve, we’ve got to learn from it and we’ve got to learn to be sharper and more ruthless and take our chances when they come.
“We’ve had some brilliant play Ben Sheaf’s hit the crossbar, Matty Godden’s hit the crossbar, we’ve had another one that’s flashed wide, but there are so many different opportunities to take the lead we just haven’t taken one of them.
“We’ve got to be better and then we’ve got to find the man where we’re not putting the ball long because then it becomes a fight and that isn’t necessarily us.
“And then when I’ve got the injuries that I’ve got, the tactical side of the game becomes more difficult because really we could have done with an extra midfield player today to try and combat what they were doing man for man in there and we needed to try and do something different but we just didn’t have it.
“I think we shouldn’t be talking about a brilliant away performance and it’s difficult to do that when you’ve conceded a rubbish goal.
“It was an outstanding performance and we can take loads forward with it, but we haven’t got the three points and that was that’s the disappointing for me because the dominance was such that we should have seen that game through.”
Positives from the afternoon…
“We were good all the way through the team, we were finding spaces off the side, down the sides and in the middle we’ve got brilliant opportunities to score and took some really good efforts on goal.
“But for me looking at that, you can play till midnight and not get the goal that you need. But that’s a disappointment but I’m not going to be too down.
“The players shouldn’t be too down because for all intents and purposes it was a really, really good away performance against one of the teams that that are showing some promising signs as well.”
Bristol City’s goal…
“The delivery is all important. We’re up there in terms of our goals from corners and our corner delivery was okay most of the time but they’ve had a couple of opportunities and that one was the one from Gardener-Hickman and it was a really decent ball.
“However it was the movement before and we get dragged underneath it and we don’t need to and Dickie’s just sort of nudged Kyle McFadzean and found a little bit of space beaten them both and he’s just got his head on it and it’s just a really poor goal.”
“Trying to find the leveller…
We’ve got a situation that if we if we take the lead, they’re having to come out of the spaces spaces to try and equalise.
“We should have had two or three goals and we weren’t and fair credit to them because they’ve come in and they’ve tried to make it difficult.
“They made the changes that then kept their energy levels high and we try to do the same. What we don’t want to do is start rushing and we know we’ve got a score. We’ve always got to get back in the game and we want to try and win the game, not just get back on level.
“So, the first thing you got to do is go in steps, we can’t start to stress, we’ve got to remain calm and we’ve got to keep doing what we were doing and finding the spaces that we’re capable of doing because we’re we look like we’re going to be a really good team.
“But, you can tell in my voice, it was really disappointing and thing is and we should be talking about brilliant performance because it was.”
On the sad news of Sir Bobby Charlton’s passing…
“I’m really sad. Sir Bobby was a gentleman. He was a brilliant player, everybody knows, but he was a gentleman.
“He was somebody who supported everybody at that football club all his life and I was one of 1000s of kids that went to his soccer schools in the early part of my life.
“I still remember them to this day and he’s a real sad loss.
“We all knew him. He was around the place all the time. I know he’s been suffering for a little while and just thoughts are with his family at this time.”
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