Brian Barry-Murphy spoke to the press following City's battling 0-0 draw against Port Vale.
“Obviously there were large parts of the performance that we would like to be better, especially in front of an incredible traveling support.” Brian began. “But overall, we have no complaints about the result of the game. I thought we were lucky to get a point based on how well Port Vale played. There are elements of our performance that need to improve, but we’ll take the point and the clean sheet.
“I think the overall character of the players to defend the goal was pleasing; they made good blocks and to preserve Nathan’s clean sheet on his debut for the Club was important.
"The players have shown an amazing humility and a work rate in training since the first day I’ve come into the Club, and it’s my responsibility to show them the way that we want to play and to reinforce those ideas when the game become more difficult. As long as the players will do that, then it’s my responsibility to show them the way we play, and we'll get where we want to go.
“We have a young team, and we were really efficient in our play on Saturday - we had a lot of success in terms of getting behind the opponent’s last line. Tonight, we got the last line, but they were playing a back five, so it makes it a little bit more difficult.
"You have to be more patient in terms of how you switch play to isolate their wide defenders, and we sort of treated the game the same as Saturday where we tried to attack heavily on the one side, and as such our play became a little bit rushed, fed into the opponents' gameplan and took away from ours.”
Tonight saw a clean sheet for debutant goalkeeper Nathan Trott, who joined on loan from Copenhagen FC on Wednesday.
“I think the players put their bodies on the line to make blocks for him.” Brian added. “This ground is not an easy one to come to, so for him to experience that and to get that reward of the clean sheet - and really just start to understand the way we want to play - will be big for us.
"The test that Port Vale provided was in ways, similar to our pre-season match at Notts County, where we played at someone’s home ground in front of their support. So, for the players to experience the same situation today was important to understand, and it’s my job to educate the players on the solutions we need to find for that challenge. As we go through the season, we’ll definitely do that.”