Ali McCann admitted “slack” defending cost Preston North End as they were defeated 3-0 by Fulham.
PNE went three goals down in the first half, conceding a strike from Fabio Carvalho and a brace by Championship top scorer Aleksandar Mitrovic inside 41 minutes.
As a result of the three points, Fulham secured their place back in the Premier League, but Ali was left disappointed with the nature of the goals he and his team-mates conceded.
“It’s a difficult evening for us,” he said. “The manner in which we conceded the goals isn’t good enough, and we’ll look at them and try and cut out those mistakes.
“You can’t come to places like this and concede goals like that. We were better in the second half, but the goals have killed us.
“It’s slack on our part and they’ve capitalised on it, and once you give goals away like that it’s a mountain to climb to get back into the game.
“As I said, it was better on our part in the second half, but you just don’t get away with that at places like this.”
After the game, the home side were back on the pitch in front of their supporters as they celebrated their return to the top flight.
Both sides knew a victory would be enough to make that happen, but North End had wanted to set out to stop a promotion party.
Ali added: "Seeing them celebrating is not easy for us considering we came down here trying to stop the party, but congratulations to them.
“They were better on the night, but we’ll go and look at the game, look at cutting out the mistakes and go again next time.”
It’s an all-Lancashire clash up next for North End, with a game at Deepdale against Blackburn Rovers coming up on Monday.
On putting Tuesday’s defeat behind them, Ali concluded: “It’s massive. That’s all you can do, roll on to the next one.
“A derby at home to Blackburn, we’ll be going into the game, forget about this one, and go into that trying to tackle it like we did the last derby – full of energy and hopefully come away with three points.”
You can watch Ali's full interview on iFollow PNE.