'Let ourselves down': Birmingham City boss gives honest view of Blackpool defeat

The Blues were the better side during the first-half at St Andrew’s but were unable to capitalise on their periods of pressure.

Stephen Dobbie’s side emerged with much more intent in the second period and got the goal they needed 14 minutes from time to keep alive their slim survival hopes.

Ian Poveda was the man to score the winner, tapping home into the back of an empty net after Morgan Rogers had dispossessed goalkeeper Neil Etheridge.

It was that moment in the 74th minute that was Eustace’s main source of frustration.

"I’m really disappointed to lose the game. The manner in which we hand the goal to them is not like us,” he said.

"We spoke about our levels of concentration and the areas where we wanted to play and that certainly wasn’t one of the areas, so I’m really disappointed with the way we conceded.

"The performance wasn’t as sharp as we wanted, we were a little bit flat.

"We did start the game well. For the first 15 to 20 minutes we were on the front foot, we played in the right areas and we had set-pieces, but they defended the box well.

"It’s just about sustaining attacks and doing the right things but out decision making at times was poor.

"We needed to move the ball more quickly and move it down the sides into areas where we were having joy during that opening 15 to 20 minutes.

"We had to get crosses into the box, which we knew about. We didn’t want to play through them because we knew it would be very difficult, hence the goal.

"Looking to play out from the back isn’t what we’re about, so the mistake we made for the goal was the most disappointing thing.

"There are positives to take from the game but we’ve let ourselves down.

"We felt whoever scored the first goal would go on and win it, we spoke about that at half-time and how we needed to do the basics. Unfortunately it never worked.”