Under-fire Bradford City manager Mark Hughes says his side's start to League Two season is 'creating too much noise' - but acknowledges next couple of weeks 'will be demanding for everyone'

City lost a second successive league game for the first time since December and dropped down to 18th place - on a night when Hughes received jeers from some followers once again alongside chants of 'You're getting sacked in the morning’.

On another setback, which followed Saturday's very disappointing 3-1 home reverse to Walsall, he said: "People have got to keep their nerve and understand you are going to get periods like this in the season.

"If it's at the beginning, people believe it's going to be the tone right through the season. It's not.

"You have these moments in the middle and the end of the season and as a consequence of the timing at the moment, there's a little bit of focus on us.

"But we have just got to calm down, relax. It's a long season and we still have a lot of games to go and we just need to turn this little period around.

"It's creating too much noise at the moment and we just need to quell that and we only do that by winning games."

Hughes felt that the defeat at lowly Rovers, with Keiron Morris scoring an 83rd-minute winner, was harsh on his side.

Earlier, home player Regan Hendry had seen his earlier effort cancelled out by Andy Cook in the second half on a night when Harry Lewis redeemed himself after a poor concession to put the Wirral side 1-0 to make a penalty save.

Hughes, whose side welcome Swindon on Saturday, continued: "We need to continue the first half, where I thought we were excellent and there was a real energy and momentum.

"Then we'll be fine, but these next couple of weeks will be demanding for everyone.

"If we lose, we get criticism and get booed, so we understand and knew that was coming.

"There is emotion in the game at the moment and situation, but in the cold light of day, if people just look at this performance on its own, I think they'd say actually we didn't do that bad and deserve to lose. Whether or not people are prepared to do that, we'll have to wait and see.

"I thought we did really well in that first half. It could have been three or four to the good. We had any number of good moments and when you are in that much command of the game, you have to take your chances and did.

"In the second half, we knew they'd be a response from them as we completely dominated the game in the first half in my view. They were better, but we still stood up to that.

"I was disappointed with the referee's performance, but there you go. The standard is not very high, but the lads gave me everything and I was pleased with our effort and it was a great goal.

"At that point, I thought we'd take the game away from them, but they had that little bit of momentum with the referee giving them that little bit of encouragement with the award of the penalty - in no way was it a penalty.

"And at the end, they had one more chance and they have taken it."