Manager Dean Saunders labelled the defeat at the hands of Preston as a ‘bad day at the office’.
Rovers were twice caught out at set pieces before a swift counter attack sealed the victory for the Lillywhites.
‘It was just a bad day today,’ said Saunders
‘Two set pieces have caught us out, you can make chances and play all the football you like but if you can’t defend corners anybody can beat you.
‘Preston are really good at set pieces and they do it to most teams, I told the players about that before the game. Martin Woods has been beaten in the air for the first goal and David Syers has let Laird get infront of him for the second.
‘That killed us really because Rob Jones had just had a chance to put us 2-1 up - I thought we created enough chances to win four of five games, they got some great blocks in but we didn’t take our chances.
‘We didn’t get going in the first 20 minutes of the game, it’s not an excuse but we’ve had game after game so I thought that they might be a bit flat tonight. We also missed Iain Hume and James Harper’s influence on the pitch – I looked round to see how I could change it but I couldn’t really.
‘If you sit down and watch the game you will see we had loads of chances but the three goals that we let in overshadow that. It was two set plays and a counter attack that beat us, some of the players looked flat some of them lost a bit of confidence – it was a bad day at the office but we will roll our sleeves up and try and beat Shrewsbury on Saturday.
Captain Rob Jones picked up his fifth booking of the season in the game and will now miss the game on Saturday.
‘I’m disappointed that Rob [Jones] will miss the next game because it is going to be a tough one. In an ideal world, if he had been booked on Saturday, he would have missed The Chesterfield game which might have helped us a bit.’
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