Bradford City boss Mark Hughes laments defending in Walsall defeat and addresses boos from fans

Andy Cook opened the scoring for the Bantams but sloppy defending allowed the visitors to run out as winners.

Liam Gordon was afforded too much space before he struck the equaliser, before Aramide Oteh and Freddie Draper both converted from corners.

Hughes said: “I thought we started really brightly, I thought we were good value for our lead, albeit it was a little bit fortunate. We didn’t retain the lead for long enough and didn’t quite get the organisation around the set-play right.

"Positionally, we were a little bit wrong. As a consequence, they’ve been able to get a run across our line and we find ourselves 2-1 down at half-time when really they hadn’t created a great deal and we’d been the better team.

"From that point onwards, you’ve got to do something about it and from their point of view, it’s perfect for them because they can get everybody behind the ball and then play on the break, which on a couple of occasions they did. They were able to get a corner and then we haven’t done our job at a set-play again.

"If you concede from set plays, then that’s going to hurt you. From that point, two goals down in terms of the scoreline, and we found it very difficult to create a great deal.”

Bradford failed to mount a second-half comeback, struggling to break down the compact Saddlers.

Hughes said: “In the end, it just petered out for us. We’ll have to learn from it because the set piece work wasn’t where we need it to be. The first one, we need to do better.

"Once someone starts cutting in from the byline and coming across your box, you need to get your body in line and make sure even if he gets a shot off, it gets blocked.

"We were a little bit too passive on a few occasions and today and that was one example of it that we were hurt by. We’re disappointed with all the goals, we always are, but I think these three could have been avoided if we’d just done the correct manner of our play that we talk about, in terms of in those situations, you have to do the right thing, and we weren’t able to do that unfortunately.”

The final whistle was followed by boos from the home supporters and not for the first time this season.

Addressing the fan unrest, Hughes said: “There’s always boos when we lose, we have to accept that. [It was] justified today, [the] second half wasn’t where we needed it to be. We conceded poor goals.”