Cardiff City boss Sabri Lamouchi blasted his relegation-threatened side's 'bad attitude' in the first half of their home defeat against Sunderland. The Black Cats dominated the opening 45 minutes in South Wales to the extent that, rather than wait until half-time, Lamouchi made a double substitution 10 minutes before the break - and afterwards said he wished he had made the changes sooner.
Sunderland did not turn their first-half superiority into goals, but Dennis Cirkin scored from close range on the hour and that goal was enough to settle matters. "When you lose, you are always disappointed," said Lamouchi, who was appointed at the end of January when Cardiff were already in real relegation trouble.
"But I am more disappointed about the first half - the second was a little bit better and we faced some situations to come back into the game. We can't concede the goal in the second half like that, we can't start the game in this way.
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"It was a bad attitude and a bad performance in the first half. We made some changes, and we could probably have made more changes.
"Probably, if I am fair, we didn't deserve more than that [defeat]. I said to the players on day one in our first meeting that I came here for two reasons: for the club and for the quality of the squad.
"I was thinking that the quality was enough to stay in the Championship. But I said as well that we would probably have to fight until the last game.
"We must be ready for that. We have to give our best but I think, in fact I know, we didn't give our best in the first half."
The changes Lamouchi made before half-time saw Jaden Philogene and Sheyi Ojo replaced by Jack Simpson and Andy Rinomhota. Sunderland had the ball in the net almost immediately through Jack Clarke, but his header was ruled out for offside.
Lamouchi said: "They [the changes] weren't too early. Probably it would have been best to do it earlier. I don't have any regrets about the changes.
"I didn't want to wait for a goal, and then they [Sunderland] scored but it was offside. I tried to change the minds of my team because they had the wrong mentality.
"I managed to do something before the break because we were so - I don't want to say the word, but not so good! It wasn't punishment for those two [Ojo and Philogene].
"It's my responsibility to try something because to stay in this shape, probably something will happen. I wanted to send a message to the team and to the players.
"We had to try to do something. I did something after 35 minutes, I tried to do something during the break, I tried to do something ten or 15 minutes into the second half, but it was not enough."
The defeat saw Cardiff drop to fourth-bottom, just a point above the relegation zone. Sunderland moved up to tenth in the table and cut the gap between themselves and the play-off places to four points.
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