Speaking after the game, the City boss said: "We are down here for a reason. The season is not just five or 10 games old, there are only about 10 games left.
"The first half was okay but the second was unacceptable. I have told the players that. If we are going to stay out of trouble, we are going to have to do better than this.
"I know as a player what it feels like to taste relegation. It's a horrible feeling that takes a long time to go away. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. "We know we are in for a rough ride and the only way we are going to stay out of trouble is if everybody realises the situation we are in.
"In the first half we weren't really in any trouble except for Tabby clearing one off the line. I was pleased with our first half performance. But we never came out for the second half.
"We got ourselves into good positions in the final third but through bad judgement we never capitalised on them. As the second half progressed, we were getting worse and worse.
"We are a team that's used to losing and we can see that on the pitch. We just can't have that - we can't have players feeling sorry for themselves. We need to be tougher mentally because we are in a relegation battle. We're not half way up the league and you don't get out of a relegation battle with performances like that.
"I can't walk through the door with a bag of special dust and say it's going to be easy for us because it's not. It doesn't work like that. There was change because the team were having a bad time and we now we have a different manager but the team and the position we're in is the same.
"We're in a position in the league where we don't want to be. The remaining games are cup finals for us and we need to approach these games with respect for where we are. We need to be harder and tougher.
"People say we want to pass the ball and that's all well and good. Our priority is winning games. We need to show a little bit more organisation than we did in the second 45 minutes because that was simply not acceptable."