Dave Horseman believes Bristol Rovers deserved more to show from their efforts in Thursday's 3-1 defeat to Exeter City.
The Gas looked on course for a Boxing Day win thanks to Promise Omochere's finish but the Grecians fired back through Jack Fitzwater, Millenic Alli’s and Jake Richards to take all three points.
Rovers looked bright, though, and saw two goals ruled out for offside, and interim manager Horseman can see the potential in the group growing.
"That one's a bit of a sickener to be honest," he said. "I thought, first half, it was a cagey-ish game. They maybe just shaded it in terms of getting behind us on the left hand side a couple times but we had a couple of moments.
"Then I felt when we came out second half, we addressed a couple of bits and I thought we created probably the most we've created for weeks but always looked a threat. Then the game kind of descended into madness, i think, with no particular help from the referee today because the first offside goal seems very harsh, particularly as they said it was Isaac Hutchinson that was offside and he's definitely not.
"Then there's a stonewall penalty on Scott. He's about to kick it in. The boy doesn't touch the ball.
"We're not in a place at the moment where actually we've probably come back from that quick enough and then obviously we have to look at ourselves. But I thought we actually played really well for large parts of that today for the first time for a little while and hopefully the new manager can see there's potential to work with within the group."
Watch the full interview above.
