Bristol City head coach Lee Johnson has reflected on a ‘fair’ point against Leeds United at the weekend.
Heading to Elland Road for the game, we had the two goal lead via efforts from Famara Diedhiou and Bobby Reid, but inside of the final 20 minutes of the game, City let slip the two goal advantage and we lost out on a maximum return for the second successive match.
With a dream start giving us two goals in the opening 16 minutes, Johnson had to reflect that with them taking two goals in the final 18 minutes – it was in reality a fair result for both sides.
Speaking to the Official Site as he met with the media following the full time whistle, a disappointed Johnson explained.
‘On the whole I think it was a fair result. I thought we were excellent in the first half; very pragmatic and functional in our play. We played to our strengths, got in behind a few times and forced Leeds into a lot of errors. At half-time we spoke about doing more of the same and we did that for the first 15-20 minutes.’
Johnson went on to say that as soon as they got the first goal you could clearly see nerves set in and he knows the battle now is to make us mentally stronger in those moments moving forward.
‘When the goal came, sometimes those nerves set in, particularly because we`re in front of a big crowd and atmosphere at Leeds, and that`s where we have to improve as a side. We have to deal with that sort of environment and in the end we didn`t quite, even though we had opportunities to go 3-0 up before they came back.’
Having referenced the atmosphere, he felt we had quietened the crowd nicely for most of the game, so that was a disappointment as we gave them something to shout about and turn the tide, although you could argue the fans maybe turned the tide for the players when they felt consigned to defeat.
‘Their fans had their grumbles and I was pleased because we had done that with our performance. It got to the point where we were so comfortable that their fans thought they may as well cheer in a positive light. They got the goal and football changes like that with momentum swings.’
With back to back leads now surrendered, he went on to say.
‘It`s obviously a flaw. You have to look at it as something to work on. I`m not going to chastise anybody because I thought there were so many good individual bits of play that went well. We had structure and were a lot more solid and at the end of the day we didn`t quite deal with the environment. We are work in progress, we`re definitely not the finished article and we have to use this as a lesson. There are positives. We`ve got a point at a really tough venue, in their manager`s first home game.’
He added.
‘In the league we`ve maintained our place in a play-off position with just 14 to play now. This was always going to be a difficult three games and it`s up to the players to respond again now and take Fulham all the way to the wire on Wednesday.’
