Oran Kearney pointed to the fine margins as his Coleraine side fell on the wrong side of a six-goal thriller at The Showgrounds on Saturday.
The Bannsiders were blitzed by a sensational start by Cliftonville, who shot into a two-goal lead inside nine minutes thanks to Rory Hale's quickfire brace.
Lee Lynch had two opportunities to reduced the deficit before Conor McKendry's deflected effort before half-time gave the hosts hope.
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But Ryan Curran's header restored the Reds' lead at the start of the second half.
Matthew Shevlin netted for the home side 12 minutes from time to set up a big finish, but it was the visitors who scored again in the dying minutes as substitute Joe Gormley made the points safe for Cliftonville.
“They had two guilt-edged chances in the first-half and took them both," said Kearney.
“We’ve had two chances in the first-half but didn’t put it into the back of the net – apart from Conor’s strike.
“Those are the fine margins especially when you play the top sides and we know we have to be ruthless.
“Sadly today we haven’t been.
“We missed a chance after 40 seconds, we then concede two horrendous goals and it was a really poor start to the game.
“The only credit I can give the players is that I think in the next 10 or 15 minutes they are full adrenaline but we were able to take the sting out of it, even though we were at home and 2-0 down.
“I don’t remember there being any attempts on our goal in the first-half after that and we found our feet and got a response through Conor which gave us a chance of rectifying the scenario.
“The frustrating thing for us is that we had a decent start to the second-half but the third goal is just an individual error which gave us a mountain to climb.
“We flipped the system to give ourselves a chance to score and we got a goal out of it, but for me with 15 minutes to go, scoring the goal down at that end I’m expecting a grandstand finish but we just don’t grab a hold of it.
“You’re looking for those star men to grab a hold of the game, and whether we get something or not, at least throw balls into the box or ask questions of them.
“It just never felt that way and when you go to three at the back, you enter a game of basketball and we tried to be expansive but you run the risk of getting caught at the other side.
“From experience in the past, we want it to be us ahead and them to chase it with 15 minutes to go so we can pick them off on the counter attack.
“It was a poor cross that didn’t get in the area that it needed to and then we get punished with their fourth goal.
“It was indicative of today’s performance and even last week.
“In the last two games it has been individual errors which are very disappointing."
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