Nigel Pearson slams Bristol City for being second best against Nottingham Forest as Robins lose on road again

Bristol City suffered a fifth Championship away loss in their last six matches on the road as Nottingham Forest won in convincing fashion on Saturday.

Despite manager Nigel Pearson returning to the city of his birth, there was little charity from the hosts who had six shots on target by the end, to the Robins’ one.

Forest go on to contest for a place in the top six having rebuilt under Steve Cooper and now sitting just three points off the play-off places.

Pearson’s side must regroup, dust themselves down and pick up the pieces, after Tomas Kalas limped off injured in the 83rd minute. And the Robins must find a way to do better on their travels having not won since the 2-3 win at Peterborough last October.

“Too many players had a bad day.” said Pearson to the official club channels afterwards. “On an individual level and collectively we were second best throughout.

“It’s a tough afternoon because of late we’ve been pretty effective in terms of an attacking force. But we just couldn’t manage the ball well enough today.

“Our midfield were very sluggish on the ball, we made some poor decisions at the back, it was a tough day for our forwards, absolutely,” he explained of the performance.

Bristol City were boosted by the return of midfielder Matty James, who came off the bench for Han-Noah Massengo in the 64th minute.

But the West Country outfit were slow to get going on the day, and things didn’t improve from there onwards.

“When you come here you know it’s going to be frantic early on,” said Pearson.

“You’ve got to deal with it. We just made too many poor decisions, and we had players who were for whatever reason were not able to turn up and do what they are there to do.

“That means we had a frustrating afternoon, because there was never any real impetus to our play.

“We have one or two players who come out of the game with credit, but I can’t say there were too many.

“They started off well and Dan made a couple of excellent saves, and then the game didn’t really develop into too much, but it’s a deflection and it goes in. Normally Dan would stop that but once it’s deflected it makes it very difficult.

“It was a bad time to concede [the first goal, on 38 minutes] but we were never really able to get ourselves going today.

“I said to the players afterwards that I don’t often say that we were underwhelming for the majority of play, but we certainly were today,” explained the Bristol City manager, who admitted that his team had been second-best throughout.

The Robins roll on to face Birmingham next weekend, before heading away to Blackburn, with the chance to get things right on their travels.