After yet another shoddy performance Peter Taylor had to admit that the chances of City getting a European spot was "Remote".

Taylor Sky Sports and City's official site afterwards, "At this level, you can't afford to fall asleep in the first half, some harsh words were said at half-time and the attitude was excellent after that. But realistically, it's another defeat.

"We are missing Muzzy Izzet because he is a confident player and that is something we are lacking at the moment. We gave the ball away too much.

"It's testing for myself and the players but I honestly believe we are good enough. We are only going to get a bit of luck to change things if we work for it. And we didn't deserve it in the first half. We certainly have to stick together."

"We still have four matches to go and we do not want this run to continue.

"At times we are showing good signs and apart from the poor goals we conceded on Saturday I thought it was a good performance.

"Today we produced some positive things at the start of the second-half but for the first 45 minutes we showed nothing but negative things.

"I was not happy with our defending for the goals but I was less happy with the way we played in the first 45 minutes, there were no leaders out there and there were people who were playing with no confidence.

"For me it was a very weak performance in the first-half.

"We raised the tempo in the second-half and we were unlucky not to score in the early part of the second-half, from there who knows what would have happened.

"I keep saying to the players that the public honor them by paying good money to see them play but I don't think any of my players gave a professional performance in the first-half.

"I look at myself very critically after each defeat, I look at the situation and all I can do is work as hard as possible to put things right.

"If I get commitment from the players I believe we can put things right but I think there were to many players today letting things happen rather than making them happen.

"I do look at myself and the defeats hurt very much but I'm not willing to jack it in, I'm going to work very hard to put things right.

"The Wycombe result did not help the situation because we lost confidence and got injuries to Izzet and Savage.

"Then we go straight into this very bad run.

"We've got to stick together and scrape a result even if it means we go and play absolutely lousy against Middlesbrough and win 1-0 with the last kick of the match."

Derby boss Jim Smith though had far more praise for his players telling his official website, “We set off really well and looked comfortable and confident, but after we scored we started to get nervous. Leicester started well second half, but we battled away and the three points were massive for us today.”

“They [City] came out and put forwards on and went for it. They knocked a lot of good balls in but we got away with it. In fact we could have done better on the break.”

Smith also commented on the sending off of Derby striker Deon Burton saying, “The report is that Deon headbutted Savage. From where I was, and it might be a bit unkind on Savage, I thought he made a meal of it.”

With Stefano Eranio adding, "Savage was trying to get people into trouble with the referee all the time."