Ryan Lowe felt his side paid the price for a lack of quality in their decision making at the top end of the pitch in Preston North End’s 1-0 defeat to Swansea City.
PNE found themselves behind in South Wales after Ryan Manning gave his side the lead inside the opening six minutes of the second half.
Ryan’s side pushed for an equaliser, with the likes of Daniel Johnson and Ryan Ledson having chances to draw level, but the goal wouldn’t come.
Speaking post-match to iFollow PNE, Ryan said: “With all due respect we felt this was a place we could come and get a result, I thought that was going to be the case.
“Towards the end we were pushing everything forward to try and get it. We’ve had one cleared off the line when it’s hit Greg Cunningham from Ryan Ledson’s strike.
“I thought the first half in the first 15 minutes we were going back a bit too much. I was saying maybe turn them in behind, we’re playing away from home, sometimes you have to play percentage football by getting the ball up the top end of the pitch and then playing.
“The turnovers were too quick. We were giving the ball away, I think they were as well. They’d have a little spell of possession and then we would.
“The turnovers were too quick and we felt if our turnovers could be a little bit better in terms of having an extra pass or taking an extra touch before we find the pass we’d have got in with a counter attack, and we felt we got into some good areas to do that.
“I thought the effort and the commitment of the lads was fantastic, I just thought we lacked a little bit of quality and a little bit of decision making at the top end of the pitch.”
It was a “thunderbolt”, as Ryan described it, which won Swansea the game, but the nature in which the chance came about is something which the manager was left frustrated with.
He said: “We give the ball away in the middle of the pitch and if we don’t give that ball away they don’t score.
“We may go up the other end because they might come at us a little bit more. They were sunk in their 18-yard box for the last ten minutes or so.
“I just wanted us to be a little bit more cute and clever and [have better] decision making with the ball, and we weren’t today.
“I’ve said to the group ‘you’ve got quality, you’re good footballers, you’ve got to find that quality’ and today was one of them days, which is a little bit disappointing where we couldn’t find that cutting edge.”
Today’s result brings to an end Ryan’s unbeaten start to life in the Championship, but his side are quickly back in action as they travel to The Hawthorns on Wednesday evening to take on West Brom.
Ryan added: “The belief’s there. You can see the belief in them and the character, I want them to believe a little bit more because I don’t just want to win one, draw one, lose one. You want to try and go on a back-to-back winning streak.
“We know the league’s tough, we know that, it’s how we react from that now.
“It’s disappointing when you come away from somewhere where you felt you could have got something.
“We wanted to take three points, we didn’t get it, but now we’ve got to react and believe that we can go to West Brom and believe that we can get a positive result.”