Bristol City News

Big Decisions Irk Cotterill

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Image for Big Decisions Irk Cotterill

Manager Steve Cotterill has once again been left ruing ‘big decisions’ in games as Bristol City fell to a two nil defeat to Blackburn Rovers yesterday.

With the double yellow card shown to on loan Aston Villa centre half Nathan Baker being one of the talking points from the game, in quotes carried by the Official Website from his after match press conference, Cotterill explained that whilst he couldn’t argue with the Baker booking four minutes into the second half, he couldn’t understand how Kieran Agard wasn’t awarded a penalty for the foul on him in the opening 45 minute period.

And the less said about their late penalty award the better possibly.

‘We didn`t get a blatant penalty on Kieran Agard and Flinty didn`t touch him for their penalty. What can you do? We`ve had some dreadful refereeing performances game after game, and I was disappointed with how their players surrounded the referee to get Nathan Baker sent off.’

For Baker, the gaffer went on to say that the player has to learn to ‘think better’ when he’s under that kind of pressure, but equally some of that pressure may have been alleviated has the referee correctly awarded us the penalty – and we’d then taken advantage of that.

‘Nathan has got to think better when he`s out there under that pressure, but by then we should have had a penalty. It`s not all our fault, but the sending-off is. I`m learning about these players all the time. I felt with 11 men we were the better team, without a shadow of a doubt. I think we would`ve gone on to win the game.’

Cotterill could also take some positives from the way the team battled when behind and reduced to ten men.

‘I thought the players showed tremendous courage and character to come home after a 3-0 away defeat and play as they did in the first half. They needed a little bit more belief and a little bit of luck to go their way – that certainly isn`t happening at this moment in time. We`ll just have to carry on working and encouraging them, because there`s still nothing wrong with the spirit we`ve got.’

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