GARY Rowett was left frustrated by the manner in which his Oxford United side conceded in their 3-2 defeat at home against Coventry City.
Jack Rudoni netted a close-range header after seven minutes to give the Sky Blues a half-time lead, and then the sides shared two goals each in a whirlwind 18 minutes during the second period.
An equaliser from Ole Romeny was followed by Ephron Mason-Clark taking advantage of indecision by Jamie Cumming to nod in, and after Elliott Moore again brought United level, Tatsuhiro Sakamoto smashed in at the back post.
Before the Sky Blues scored their third goal of the afternoon though, Cumming had to save low and deny Ellis Simms from the penalty spot.
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U’s head coach Rowett said: “I’m disappointed for many reasons. I’m disappointed firstly in the way we started the game.
“When you’re at home, certainly what you can’t afford to do is concede a poor goal after five minutes and make things very difficult.
“I thought it was a really poor goal to concede, and then we started to settle down quite well after about 10 minutes.
“We started to move the ball quite well and got into some very good positions. It was more promising positions than making loads of them.
“To then of course equalise, the disappointment was it wasn’t for too long, and that was a bit of a challenge that we needed to hold on a bit longer and build because we had a little bit of momentum.
“When we got back to 2-2, we had some really good momentum, and of course conceded the penalty.
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“We conceded really poor goals today. If you look back at the goals, the first one is a cross that we should do more to stop the cross and then stop the run in the box.
“The second one I think is a ball that gets toed to Jamie, and I think he’ll be disappointed there and I think he’s got to go and dominate the forward in that instance.
“I don’t think you’d expect him [Mason-Clark] to get a header in front of him [Cumming], so he’s got to go and do better there.
“I wondered if he’d gone to try and head it, and felt he couldn’t, but I think he went with his hands. It is what it is, sometimes you make those mistakes, but it was a costly goal for us.
“Then the third one, we switch off and they score. It was just disappointing because I thought we were more creative today.
“We created a lot better opportunities, got into much better areas and I felt there was a little bit more energy about us, and yet we come off with nothing to show for it. That’s the frustrating bit about it.”
