Ryan Lowe felt his side should have made better decisions in the final third during the first half of their 1-0 defeat to Birmingham City.
After an opening to the game which saw not much in the way of chances for either side, North End began creating opportunities in the latter stages of the opening period.
Mads Frøkjær and Robbie Brady both got themselves into promising opportunities within the penalty area and opted to pass to a teammate instead of shooting, and those chances were dealt with by the hosts, who went on to win the game in the 68th minute courtesy of Jay Stansfield after an unfortunate Liam Lindsay slip.
Ryan said: “I thought the first ten or 15 minutes were a little bit cagey from both teams. We’ve got two glorious opportunities to go in at 2-0 at half-time and didn’t take them.
“Robbie’s disappointed in himself that he hasn’t shot. He’s tried to pull it back for a striker, and then obviously Mads is in with a fantastic chance just to roll it in and he’s tried to play Duano [Holmes].
“They’re chances just eight yards out where we’ve got to shoot. We knew that. I said we’ve got to be on the front foot again in the second half, and lo and behold the goal that’s won it for them is a slip.
“We haven’t had that type of luck all season where you’ve gone through one-on-one. You expect a good player like Stansfield to put it in the back of the net, although Fred [Freddie Woodman] has almost got to it.
“So yeah, we’re disappointed, I don’t think we did enough to go and win the game in the second half or to go and get back into it.
“First half we should put that to bed and score two goals, definitely.”
With Norwich City dropping points in the lunchtime kick-off, there was an opportunity for North End to close the gap between themselves and the sixth-placed Canaries to two points.
While unfortunately that didn’t happen, the silver lining – or added frustration – is that no real ground has been lost to teams chasing the final Play-Off spot.
Ryan said: “We can’t get too down. We did this after Stoke and went back to the drawing board and got two wins on the bounce, and this is what we’ve got to do again.
“The league’s tough. You’ve seen the results today, they’re all crazy. It gives you opportunities and it’s a missed opportunity for us to collect a point or three.
“We’ve got none so what we’ve got to do is get back to the training ground and do the basics a little bit better.
“If we make better decisions and do the basics a little bit better then it’s proven we’ll win games of football.”
