Boss calls for away improvement

Gary Megson’s team have slumped to second from bottom of the Barclays Premier League and Tottenham’s recent revival under Harry Redknapp will have Trotters fans fearing the worst.

But with an up and down City due at the Reebok Stadium tomorrow, Hughes wants a positive reaction to defeat on the road last time out at Middlesbrough.

He told us: “In fairness, at Middlesbrough we created enough chances to win the game, unfortunately we didn’t score when we needed to.

“When that happens the opposition gets a little bit of encouragement and we’re obviously disappointed with the award of the penalty and felt aggrieved by that.

“Once they got their noses in front they were going to try and protect what they had. That’s been the case on a number of occasions, Wigan springs to mind, a very similar game in many respects.”

And those occasions Hughes refers to came away from home were City have only picked up maximum points once – something he fully aware of.

“We need to be better away from home,” he declared. “We had a fantastic performance at Sunderland but we haven’t really replicated that since. So we need to get back on track.

“We’re trying different things away from home to try and enable us to win the games that we feel we should, although we have still been trying to play attacking football on the road.

“Maybe we have to temper that somewhat on occasion because we have played like a home side at times and allowed the team who are at home to play on the counter-attack.

“In an attacking sense we always look dangerous and look a threat, which is reassuring, I’d be more concerned if we weren’t creating any chances.

“On occasion because of our attacking mindset we’re going to be exposed. Those are the situations that we need to be better at.

“In some respects it is a positive in that the opposition respect the ability and quality we have. But we have to be more adept at taking points from away games.”