Sellés laments familiar frustrations

Nottingham Forest led 2-0, 3-1 and 4-2, eventually running out 4-3 winners in a breathless encounter.

Saints kept pushing and dominated possession, chances and territory, only to shoot themselves in the foot by conceding from all four of Forest’s attempts on target in the game, as the hosts punished Sellés’s side on the counter-attack, and capitalised on individual errors.

“The reflection is frustrating, because I think we made a good performance, but we gave it away ourselves,” the manager said.

“Unfortunately the feeling is familiar. We have other games that we did the same. It’s not that any opponent just play against us and outplay us, it’s just in the key moments of the game we concede some goals, and then it’s very difficult.

“I think we had the game in the beginning. We can score that first goal but we didn’t, and then it’s always difficult to come back.

“The feeling is that every situation that can go against us is going against us – not only the finishing actions, but also the situations like the penalty.

“You can make mistakes, but every mistake is hitting us so hard and it is very difficult to come back. We showed that we have the character to come back, but it’s about reducing those situations to be able to win football matches.”

The result leaves Saints eight points adrift of safety with just three games to play, starting with a home match against Fulham on Saturday.

“The mindset should be the same,” Sellés continued. “We need to play every single game. We need to wake up tomorrow and go and prepare the next game and be competitive as we have been in almost every game, and then go and try to get the three points.

“We have fans that we need respect, we have a city that we need to respect and we have ourselves that we need to respect.

“We put all the fault that we have on ourselves. Unfortunately it has not been good enough, but the line to continue going is that line.”