"The first half was shocking," he said.
"We gave them too much time on the ball. We matched up their system and it was about being better than the man you are playing against.
"They are the best side I've seen this season. They are a quality team, I watched them against Crawley and they smashed them.
"But we stuck with it. The attitude was first class, but we lack quality in certain areas of the pitch.
"We know we can be better. We certainly were not on our game, but the longer it stayed 1-0 it gave us an opportunity to get something out of the game.
"We certainly had a go and we got in amongst them in the second half.
"It's alright talking about us as being a nice footballing team, but you have to do the ugly bits and we didn't do that.
"The black and white shirts were a lot better than us in the first half."