Bristol City were on for a Boxing Day win, one-up against Charlton in injury-time thanks to Nathan Baker’s goal a missed Marlon Pack penalty proved costly with Harry Lennon equalising in injury-time.
Steve Cotterill was left disappointed with a failure to see out the lead, telling the Official Website after the game dominating a game but not winning is probably why City are struggling with a failure to take chances proving costly.
‘It’s a game we’ve dominated, but we always needed that second goal and we spoke about that at half-time. That’s probably the reason we are where we are. A lot has been made of that because we’ve dominated lots of games, so this isn’t anything new.
‘Jonathan (Kodjia) has had quite a few chances today and he’s got to make sure he works the goalkeeper on those. We had one when Aaron (Wilbraham) hits a deflected shot and it looks like it’s going in but he (Kodjia) heads it over. We’ve had the penalty with Marlon, Elliott Bennett has had a couple of efforts, and Luke Freeman as well.’
It was a game he felt the Robins ‘deserved to win that by a country mile.’
Next up came the meeting with Burnley. Cotterill returned to his former side Burnley on Monday but this return wasn’t a good one for him or Bristol City with the Clarets running out four-nil winners.
Andre Gray had been a summer transfer target with the striker turning down the move to Ashton Gate with his hat-trick and Scott Arfield’s goal securing Burnley the points.
Cotterill told the Official Website he fancied City to get something if they could have got into half time level, as seemed likely to be the case, but the second Burnley goal on half time was ‘a kick in the teeth.’
‘In the first half we were only okay – that slope is quite strong and we had to keep them at bay a little bit. Had we got to half-time 0-0, I’d have fancied us. The second goal before half-time was a real kick in the teeth, but I thought we started the second half very brightly and we were the better team.’
The boss didn’t think he could fault the effort and honesty as his side kept going but when two or three-down it’s a continued display with ‘broken hearts’ by then.
It might have been a tough afternoon but Cotterill finished by saying he feels the Robins will be better for this and he’s not going to rant and rave about the players too much as they don’t need telling what went wrong.
‘Collectively, we don’t have enough out there when the game gets a little bit scary for us. And that’s tough at the moment. They’ll be better for it, but in the meantime we’re going to have days like today and we’re going to have sleepless nights – probably throughout the season. The last thing my players need is me talking about any other players. I’ll keep working with them because they’ve all improved massively – we’re just not seeing that at the moment in the league table.’
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