“I can accept coming here and getting beat like that”

Russell Martin was frustrated with the defensive sloppiness that saw Harry Darling gift the only goal of the game to Preston in the 1-0 loss at Deepdale but was overall extremely pleased with the performance.

Indeed the Swans boss went as far as to say that if the team perform in that manner, he’s happy to accept the defeat despite it being clear to those watching that the first half in particular was largely unacceptable.

Much like the Bristol City game the Swans had to bounce back from a poor first half and admittedly did improve in the second half but it was still too laboured and lacking ideas going forward.

Swansea stay in the top six ahead of Wednesday’s Championship fixtures with the home game against Wigan following on Saturday. There are then two further fixtures away from home before the World Cup break.

Martin told Wales Online: “They’ve had two scary moments in the first half, both from not marking in the box and we concede a goal from a mistake.

“Mistakes hurt us tonight but we were brilliant. Freddie Woodman’s had to make three or four outstanding saves. It was just attack after attack in the second half.

“I can accept coming here and getting beat like that. I’m really disappointed by the nature of the goal that we conceded but I think nine times out of ten if we play like that in the second half, we’ll come away with at least a point.

“Really frustrated at the result, but I can’t be too unhappy with the performance.

“We paid for some individual mistakes. We had a couple of players who weren’t as sharp as they have been, but when you have a lot of young players that happens.

“Harry’s been great recently, he’ll bounce back no problem, but with young players sometimes, we’ve spoken about it before, you have these moments of pain but the way they bounce back from that.

“Steven [Benda] had the one save to make and they’ve scored from the rebound, apart from that, he hasn’t had anything to do. We need to score by being more ruthless, Ryan Manning’s chance, Harry Darling across the goal, he needs to hit the target. Woodman’s made an outstanding save from Jay.

“So I’m frustrated that we didn’t score, we deserved to but to come away from home and be that dominant and aggressive in the second half is outstanding, but we’ve given a team something to hang on to and that’s the most frustrating bit really.”