Stuart Pearce was understandably disappointed with City’s 3-0 defeat at Chelsea but says he could not fault his team’s efforts on Sunday afternoon.
City were two down inside 25 minutes, and reduced to 10 men after an hour when Bernardo Corradi was sent off on debut, but Pearce was taking the long view of the whole performance.
“Our season is not going to be shaped by results at Stamford Bridge, it’s going to be shaped more by results against teams that are going to be near us. That does not make me feel any better coming away from here, but everyone scrapped away pretty well.
“If you go down to 10 men, you have a problem. I thought Corradi did pretty well and was very competitive when he was on, and we have got to lift the confidence in the side for Wednesday evening.”
Pearce expanded on how he saw the Corradi situation developing.
“I’m disappointed, but I said to the fourth official 15 minutes before when Essien caught him on the shin in the same area of the pitch that I could not see how the referee had missed it. That’s no criticism of the referee, but that contributed to Essien being in the same position with the ball, a little bit of frustration has crept in with Bernardo, which he has got to channel but we will have no problem with him.”
With Wednesday’s game against Portsmouth now focusing City’s minds, Pearce will try to look to the positives from Sunday.
“We have got to make sure we take away the good bits that we did today. In some ways I was pleased for the players, disappointed with the result and if we had scored when we had the opportunities we could have out a bit of pressure on them.”
The Manager also confirmed that Didi Hamann’s foot injury will see him in all probability miss out on this week’s two home games.
“I don’t think he’ll make it and I think he won’t be available until after the Arsenal game. It’s disappointing, I would liked to have had his little bit of know-how out there today.”
