With Borussia Dortmund beating Real Madrid in the other group game, City, now bottom of Group D, face an uphill task to progress to the knock-out stages of the competition.
“We’ve been beaten by a very good Ajax team but we should have done much better,” said a downbeat Richards.
“When we went a goal up in the first-half they were probably the better team, but in the second period, we just crumbled. We are all very disappointed.”
Richards admitted he’d envisaged six points from the two games against the Dutch outfit – a scenario that would have put City right back in contention near the top of the table.
But it wasn’t to be.
“We knew this was going to be a tough group but, with all respect to Ajax, I really thought we’d come here, win this game and really get our Champions League campaign up and running,” he said.
“We’re not out of it yet, but it will be really difficult. We’ll get back on the training ground, start again and try and work out where we went wrong.
“We have Ajax again in a fortnight and we need to make sure we win and see where that takes us – that’s the best we can do, now.”
