Every word Liam Manning said on Portsmouth, Bristol City frustration, Twine illness and more

Bristol City missed the chance to close the gap to the play-off positions as they were comfortably beaten 3-0 by John Mousinho's Portsmouth at Fratton Park on Saturday.

Goals from Colby Bishop, Josh Murphy and Callum Lang ensured that all three points remained on the South Coast as the Robins missed out on the chance to secure back-to-back wins for the first time this season.

Although City had a few chances of their own, the Reds' attack never looked as though they would beat Nicolas Schmid in the home side's net, with Anis Mehmeti and Sinclair Armstrong the only two players to force the keeper into a save.

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The defeat at Fratton Park leaves the Reds six points adrift of the play-off positions and eight clear of the relegation zone after 19 games with a trip to Sunderland next on the agenda.

Here is every word Liam Manning said in his post-match press conference following the full-time whistle on Saturday afternoon.

Liam an incredibly disappointing afternoon, give me your thoughts on where it went wrong today.

Pretty much everywhere. We were second best in most things which hasn't been like us. I'll be the first to defend the lads if I think we perform to a level, but we didn't hit that today in most areas. In duels, second balls, quality on the ball, finishing, defending the box and so many areas. It's not been like us. The lads, irrespective of results, have hit a consistent run of form so it's really frustrating and disappointing.

Those first two goals, giving the ball away in bad areas it must be doubly frustrating that they didn't have to work too hard for that.

It's a bit about decision-making for me. In really tough conditions against a team that does really want to press, which makes it even harder, you have to be a little bit smart. At the same point, so many of those have come off right and we've created off of it, progressed up the pitch or scored from it so it's one of those where you have to adapt a little bit to the style and type of the game and we didn't do that today.

That first goal your captain wanted the ball, would you have preferred it to maybe have just gone long instead?

I want the players to want the ball, I want them to play and I want them to be brave but to the same point, I want them to make really good decisions and when you coach the decision-making element of it which we do, sometimes they'll get it right, sometimes they'll get it wrong.

The biggest thing is, you have to learn from it and you have to make sure you don't repeat it regularly. We have to make sure that we suck up today and make sure in the future we don't repeat that.

That's the execution, what about the effort and energy today? Were you happy with that or was that lacking?

I thought they had more intensity than we did which isn't good enough. We have to look at the why because it hasn't been like us. We're looking at during the week, the intensity last week and at Watford was outstanding so for me the habit has been to work with real intensity and I thought they just adjusted and adapted to the conditions a lot better and style it probably suited them a lot better which is no excuse. On days like today, we have to come away with something.

It is that magic word consistency, is it just the age of the group that means you're struggling to put those two really good performances together at the moment?

The performances we have, results we haven't. When you look at Burnley, Watford and Plymouth last week, they were really good performances. We just haven't had the wins to go with it. I'm not looking at age, it's trying to turn around historically what the club has done for quite a while now. It's not easy to do that, it's a tough division, it's a relentless division. We've definitely made progress in so many areas and that's why as disappointed as I am and the lads are there today, we have to make sure we understand why, we don't overreact but we have to learn and make sure we go again Tuesday.

You have to take your chances when they come along, you did have some there today, some key moments in the game that might have turned things around.

Yeah possibly, but we didn't we've said that a few times where we've had chances and not executed it. Last weekend we did and today we didn't but if you want to progress and if you're serious about putting runs of results together, you have to stay in the game and find a way to be clinical. That's ultimately what happened at home, Sheffield United jumps to mind where we were dominant, and performed so well, they stayed in the game and got something from it so we have to get better at game management and learn how to get results from games.

It's a pretty unforgiving schedule as you're up to Sunderland on Tuesday, how do the next few days look? Is there room for rest or is it straight back in to prepare for that one?

I think it's a good thing, we have to respond to today. It wasn't good enough to carry the emotion tonight, we should all hurt, we should all be frustrated and disappointed because we didn't hit the level that we expected and it's a case of rest, recover tomorrow, recover, train Monday and go through the work to travel up there and go again.

Liam you've spoken before that the only two games you feel you've played badly this season were Blackburn and Derby. Can you put your finger on what happened there and today to produce that sort of performance?

I wish I knew exactly why because we'd obviously affect it and change it. Unfortunately today it was very similar today I felt to Blackburn where we have to look at it in a bit of light. The players straight away took accountability themselves, a few of them the more senior ones stepped up to individually look internally first because there were not enough individuals at the level and then as a collective, we weren't either and that's staff, that's everybody.

I know none of the lads, you've seen how hard they work, I know none of the lads intentionally do what happens today, what we have to make sure of is that it doesn't happen too often. When you're having a tough day, you're not performing at the level what does it look like? What you don't do is give away real clearcut chances to the opposition.

It felt early on Rob Dickie was looking long to find Nahki Wells. Is that something you'd spoken about before, almost bypassing the midfield?

A little bit. They press quite well. I thought the conditions made it quite difficult to play through them, you saw what happened on the first goal and the second goal, but on the same point when Rob got a few right he found Birdy between the lines, and Anis had a few. I thought the last 10 minutes of the first half was us, the first 35 minutes was them so we started to get a bit of momentum in the first half.

It's so difficult in the way the game was in how do you create really clear-cut chances. There's come through their press and us, not through opening people up and we had to work really hard to create good chances which we then didn't finish. Overall we didn't deserve anything from the game so whatever it looks like now, we have to go away suck it up and make sure they don't happen too often.

Did you feel you lost that momentum after half-time? It didn't feel like you managed to kick on in the second half.

It was tough, I'd have to go back and look. The game is such an emotional rollercoaster that the longer the game went on the more frustrated, annoyed, and disappointed I got so I'll have to go back and have a look at it because ultimately from start to finish it wasn't good enough.

Scott Twine was missing through illness, is there a chance he could be back for Sunderland?

I have no idea, to be honest. He didn't train yesterday, did a bit on Thursday but didn't feel great after it so didn't train yesterday so I don't know at the moment.

Chris Hogg mentioned in the week that Mark Sykes, Kal Naismith and a few others were back on the training ground, is there any chance any of them could make the trip?

No.

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