Head coach Inigo Calderon bemoaned another early goal conceded and failure to respond after Bristol Rovers were beaten 1-0 by Stevenage.
The Pirates remain in the bottom four and the Spanish coach knows his side must improve – and quickly – if they are to beat the drop.
Jamie Reid scored the only goal of the game to condemn the hosts to a seventh defeat in their last eight games, with just two matches remaining to climb out of the relegation places.
“We concede an early goal and it takes too long to recover from that,” he said. “The first half was not good enough and the second one was a bit more chaotic. We didn’t deal with the anxiety. We didn’t have calmness. It was a bad game, as simple as that.
“How many games have we conceded early?” Calderon asked, with Birmingham, Exeter and Mansfield scoring in the opening 15 minutes recently.
“It’s the last thing you want and we said the same thing after the game against Exeter.
“They (Stevenage) then start to waste time, but I don’t blame them for that – we have enough to blame ourselves, me the first one.
“We are not learning from our mistakes. The goal…there were so many mistakes in that.”
Stevenage manager Alex Revell was delighted with his match-winner as Northern Ireland striker Reid scored an excellent individual goal, slaloming past several attempted tackles before smashing the ball home.
Revell made seven changes to his team and there was no lack of coherence in Stevenage’s performance. Reid was one of the recalled players and he decided the game.
“I think he tried his hardest to miss it with the man on the line,” joked Revell of the goal. “We went with Reid because we thought he could get down the sides – he’s been desperate for that and it was a really good goal. A real Reidy goal: when he gets his head down and really gets at people.
“I think he was a menace all day. But second half we should have killed the game off and we need to improve that as a club.”
Revell was pleased with his side’s display, if not their ruthlessness in front of goal in the second half, as Jamie Roberts and Kyle Edwards both spurned decent opportunities to add to Boro’s advantage.
“It was a proper Stevenage performance,” said Revell. “We made changes to the team and utilised our squad.
“I thought first half they had a little bit of a spell but we created so many chances in the game.
“We knew this would be a difficult day but I thought we managed the game brilliantly and should have been out of sight.”
