DRENCHED, defeated and disappointed but not demoralised! That was the word from the dressing room after Wanderers' mini-revival skidded off course on a rain-soaked Maine Road.

A three-match unbeaten run had boosted hopes they might pull away from the relegation zone but all the good work was undone with one of their most lacklustre displays of recent times.

Sam Allardyce was critical but stopped short of piling on the misery, acknowledging the efforts of his depleted squad in taking five points from the home draws against West Brom and Chelsea and the victory at Leeds, describing the derby defeat as "a bridge too far" for many of the players he was forced to draft in.

Anthony Barness, one of those who has successfully stepped into the breach, refused to let the day's disappointment dent his morale.

"We are not all going to be too down because we've lost one game in four," the defender said in a calm, post-match assessment.

"We've got to get back to the form we showed in the previous three performances. We'll have players coming back (from injury and suspension) as well so it's not all that bad - and even if they take a couple more weeks to get back, we're confident we can bounce back because we've proved we can cope without a lot of them up until now.

"We're disappointed because we thought in the last few games that we'd turned it round and put in a few good performances.

"We needed to carry it on to get out of the bottom three but we collapsed a bit in the second half.

"We felt quite comfortable at the back and there was some quite good football being played in front of us, although it didn't result in good crosses or shots on target.

"Even after the first goal we thought we could get back into it. We thought we were going to create chances but the second half just started off so much in their favour and we never recovered from that."

Barness believes Peter Schmeichel's double save 11 minutes from time, when the great Dane blocked Jermaine Johnson's shot with his legs then reached up to keep out Jay-Jay Okocha's tame follow-up, proved crucial.

"I think they were a bit nervous about holding onto it and, if that one had gone in, they (the fans) would have turned on them and we'd have had the impetus," he suggested.

"It could have made a difference but it didn't go in. In the end we just didn't create enough."