Despite battling back from a setback in the very first minute at Forest and producing some promising football in the first half, the second half performance highlighted to Interim Manager Paul Ince how soft the underbelly of this side can be.

“I was very disappointed with the second half. It was embarrassing,” he said. “You can see why this team has conceded so many goals – because they’ve got a soft underbelly.

“You set up a gameplan…then after 18 seconds it’s out of the window. You can’t be conceding goals after 18 seconds. We knew about Spence, we showed the players enough stuff on him, but before you know it you’re 1-0 down.

“After the goal, I thought we were great. We had two wonderful chances, with Morro and then Josh – who I thought was outstanding considering it was his first game back.

“And I go in at half time and I’m not happy that we’re losing but I’m content with what I’ve seen. We’re in it. We’re in the game.

“But we concede a second goal and we capitulated. You can’t do that.

“This is a team who have been used to playing lovely football, but all of a sudden they are in a dogfight and they need to realise that.

“I’ve told them in no uncertain terms today that they’ve got to roll their sleeves up and fight. There weren’t enough players in that second half that did that.

“It's hard to change the mentality in such a short space of time. But we have got to dig in. We have got to learn how to scrap. And I didn’t see that in the second half today.

“The fans who came here were fantastic. They stuck with us to the end. Our fans know the situation and we need our fans behind us.

“But to have structure, you need to communicate. We needed voices out there. In the second half, everyone started feeling sorry for themselves – I don’t like that in my team.

“We all have to roll our sleeves up. And in that second half we didn’t. We had players missing and out with COVID today, but it doesn’t mean we can battle like we did in the first half, put tackles in.

“Everyone is fighting down there. We aren’t digging in. We have to dig in for the club, for the fans, for the staff at the club. If we don’t dig in, we know where we’re going to be.”

"We're in a dogfight and this team needs to roll its sleeves up and scrap!"