Joey Barton had no complaints about Bristol Rovers defeat at Barnsley on Tuesday, with his players "second best in every department".
The Gas were rocked by Devante Cole's opener inside three minutes at Oakwell and Jordan Williams doubled the lead inside a quarter of an hour, thanks to a huge deflection.
Rovers never threatened a recovery and Josh Benson added a third for the hosts, drilling into the bottom corner from 25 yards to wrap the game up 10 minutes into the second half.
The defeat drops the Pirates to 10th in League One with six points from four games, but after two victories against Burton Albion and Oxford United, Barton was disappointed by his players' showing in South Yorkshire.
"We’ve got no complaints, we were not good enough," he said. "We were caught cold. I don’t know whether it was the deluge or whatever, but the lads were 1-0 down after three minutes.
"A shocking goal to give away and we didn’t really settle at all, doing some bizarre things in terms of managing the game and playing the conditions.
"They end up with a strike from distance that deflects and Belly’s got no chance, so they had a bit of fortune in there, but everything that could go wrong tonight seemed to go wrong.
"We were second best in every department and that is very rare for our boys. Usually, two or three of them will dig something out and force a performance but tonight we were really poor.
"The lads know in there, they don’t me to say it, we’ve been second best in every single department. It’s rare for the lads. They usually don’t have an off day like that right across the board and absolutely every single player will look at this game and think we could be better.
"We didn’t win anywhere near enough second contacts and if you don’t do the basics well at any level of football, you won’t get anything out of it. I thought we were slightly fortunate to get in at half time only two down because we were abject.
"Second half, I thought we were a little bit more solid, a little bit safer going to a back three, but we didn’t do anywhere enough to force it and make it an entertaining second half. We were poor."
The performance gave Barton plenty to consider ahead of Saturday's trip to Fratton Park to take on Portsmouth.
"We’ve lost a battle today but there’s a war of 46 games in this league," he added.
"It is three points dropped, three points lost. We’ve made a good fist of the start of the season, but it could have been better for sure and we’ll have to dust ourselves down quickly and get ready for a scrap at Portsmouth on Saturday."
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