Super-sub Nahki Wells praised by Bristol City boss Liam Manning

Bristol City boss Liam Manning hailed “terrific character” Nahki Wells after he came off the bench to score the only goal of the game at Plymouth.

Half-time substitute Wells scored the Robins’ 57th-minute winner as Argyle slumped to 21st in the Championship, one point above the relegation zone following five straight home defeats without scoring.

Manning said of the striker: “Nahki is a terrific character; I’m delighted for him that he came on and got the winner for us.

“In the first half we obviously expected them to come at us, with the home fans creating an atmosphere and getting behind them.

“And obviously their set-up was a bit more aggressive and front-footed. For the first 20-25 minutes we weathered the storm a little bit, which sometimes you have to.

“We changed it from a five to a four 20 minutes in which allowed us to get a bit more pressure. For the last 15 minutes of the first half we came back into it and were more in their half than ours.

“I thought we did a good job of seeing that through then shifting the control back to us.

“We made the three changes at half-time which I want to stress were not performance-related.

“I thought the energy in the second half was going to be really important and fortunately it helped.

“It’s nice to have the experience and quality that we’ve got to make changes during the game.

“The physical demands in this league at this stage of the season are huge. I think the international break came at a really good time for us.

“You sometimes need that time to consolidate and reflect. I think having that two-week international break allowed us to reset, refocus.

“We took confidence from the performance on Friday and it was a different challenge today.

“Before the Leicester game we talked about resetting after the international break and an eight-game season. We’ve won the first two.”

Plymouth head coach Ian Foster said: “For a good while throughout the game we were the better side.

“They switched to a back four and made three changes at half-time. That tells you something about the way we were playing.

“The performance was outstanding for most of the game. We got more frustrated as the game wore on.

“We all want to be together. You can’t fault the players’ application. We just have to be more ruthless when we get our chances. We’ve got to do better.

“We had enough possession and created enough opportunities and, in those moments, we have to score.

“We are all disappointed. We are doing everything we can to arrest this spell we are going through.

“Our attention turns to the next game (Rotherham away), which is massive for us. But all games are massive now.

“Nobody is happy when you don’t win games of football. We take responsibility and we try our hardest to win games of football.

“When your luck is not going with you it’s not.

“We keep working really hard. In these moments you find out about yourselves. We are desperate to stay in this division and we are fighting to do that, you could see that from the players’ application.”