Joey Barton said there will be "no sulking or excuses" from him or his Bristol Rovers players in the aftermath of a dismal 2-1 defeat to Burton Albion at the Mem on Saturday.
The Gas were so impressive in the opening exchanges and took a deserved lead when John Marquis headed home James Gibbons' superb cross, but the game spiralled out of control for Rovers with a soft goal for the visitors either side of half time.
Substitute Charlie Kirk levelled just before the break after the Gas failed to deal with a long ball from back to front, and the second was worse as the ball pinballed around the box with several opportunities to clear before Sam Winnall gleefully bundled home to put the Brewers in the lead.
Rovers' drained confidence levels were apparent as they tried to get back into the game, with the precise build-up play that served them so well in the first half deserting them in favour of long balls with the wind at their back, making life far too easy for Burton's backline to hold onto their lead.
There was an element of controversy about the second goal, with claims for a foul and offside, but Barton believes the Gas were responsible for their own downfall on Saturday.
"It’s a tough moment for us as a group; lads are lower on confidence than you would like," he said.
"We get a great start and go 1-0 up in the game and possibly should have got a second or third. There was a little bit of a break in play and we didn’t seem to recover after that.
"A long punt down the pitch was not dealt with and a team that had created nothing found themselves 1-1 in the game and I think that just ate into the lads’ confidence.
"Second half, they kept trying and having a go, but we lacked a lot of quality today. It’s a tough moment but we’ve just got to keep scrapping through it.
"So there will be no sulking from us, no excuses. We’ll be back on the training pitch and ready to rock and roll at Oxford next Saturday."
The defeat, Rovers' fifth in their past six League One games, leaves them 15th in the table, nine points clear of the relegation zone ahead of the trip to Oxford United in seven days' time.
Barton, who has been very critical of referees in recent weeks as the Gas have fallen foul of poor officiating in key moments, but for the debate about the second goal, he says Rovers have to take responsibility for their own shortcomings.
He said: "Without criticising the officials, I’m trying my best not to do it, I do feel was a foul on Jarell. It wasn’t given, but we still have opportunities to deal with it and we must do better.
"We will speak about that internally because I don’t want to drag the lads’ confidence down further by naming them in the media, but you have got to expect things to go wrong as a defender and be pessimistic.
"Jarell is possibly fouled, but we’ve got to be ready to catch any mistake or opportunity for the opponent. We didn’t do that and we got punished.
"It takes the energy out of the stadium. The fans were excellent and driving the team on, but we needed that second goal. That second goal would have elevated the confidence levels and settled everybody down and we probably would have not looked back from there.
"But that didn’t happen and we’re on the canvas because we can’t manage to clear our box or keep the ball out of our net.
"We gave the ball away needlessly for the second goal and have a couple of opportunities to clear and moments of good goalkeeping and good defending, but you can’t keep blocking shots. We had to exit the box and we didn’t manage to do that and we lost the game."
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