Blues boss Paul Jewell says that Town have been the architects of their own downfall in recent weeks having developed a tendency to concede goals from set pieces, something which they hadn’t been doing earlier in the season. The Liverpudlian says his side should have picked up six points in the last couple of games, a haul which would have left them far nearer the top of the division than their current lowly standing of 16th.
Jewell said: "You feel physically sick when you lose games at any time, but certainly in the last two weeks the way we’ve lost games is very difficult to take. We’ve lost them through our own doing really.
"We’ve conceded from set plays and yet we hadn’t conceded from a set play up until the Crystal Palace game. Since then we’ve conceded four or five, which is doubly disappointing, especially because of the lateness that the goals have been conceded.”
Having assessed the goals from the Reading game — striker Daryl Murphy having admitted culpability for the Royals' first equaliser — Jewell felt the problems were clear to see: "We watched the videos again yesterday and it’s basically people getting out-jumped at corners, it’s as simple as that.
"And also we have to be careful because we do give silly fouls away at times. We’ve got to cut that pettiness out of our game, which is costing us.”
Jewell believes his side need to have a greater solidity about them at Burnley on Tuesday: "We have to be resilient. We’ve lost five games on the bounce and no one’s going to give us anything. We’ve got good players in the squad, but it’s just not happening for us at the moment.
"We’ve still got a lot of time left in the season, we’ve got a lot of time to climb the table, but we’re also aware we’re at the wrong end of it, we’re not kidding ourselves.
"We’ve been so close in the last couple of games, it’s not as if we’ve been played off the park. We haven’t played well, we certainly didn’t play well on Saturday, but we could easily have had six points out of the last two games and everything would have been rosy.”
While the Blues were letting their late lead slip against Reading, Burnley were coming from behind to win their game against Hull City 3-2, a result which the Town boss feels will have given them a massive boost: "They came back from 2-0 down, scoring three late goals and they’ll be full of confidence now.
"This league is so topsy-turvy, if we’d have got six points out of the last two games, which we could easily have done, I think we’d be one point outside the top six with a game in hand.
"But ifs, buts and maybes are not what win you football matches, it’s actually doing it and I’m aware of that.”
Photo: Action Images
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