Poor defending and missed chances summed up Stevenage's trip to Bradford City according to manager Steve Evans - with the latter of particular concern.

The Bantams won 3-0 at Valley Parade but Stevenage had opportunities to get themselves both into the game and back into the lead before a double in six second-half minutes ended their hopes.

Jamie Reid had a couple of goes, Luke Norris lifted another just past the post while there were others that caused the Boro boss plenty of frustrations.

He said: "We’ve not defended properly and that’s always the excuse for why you concede goals but we missed a succession of chances.

"And that’s been most weeks but we got punished because we were playing a better side.

"The second half was all us apart from counter attacking.

"They break and I need to look at where my defenders are when Cookie sticks it in and then the third, we’ve sent him inside to the edge of our box too easily.

"But at 1-0, 2-0 and 3-0, we never looked like scoring. It was big chance, miss, big chance, miss.

"There’s a huge chance at 1-0 and we don’t even make contact with the ball.

"It’s just a poor day but we’ll lift our spirits and go again. You have to put it aside.

"People who are educated in football, and there is a lot of them in this Bradford support, they will go away thinking Stevenage are a decent side.

"We should go in at half-time 3-1 in front and if we do that, we go on and win the game.

"But we’ll learn from it. We changed the shape two or three times in the game and it probably didn’t work in the second half.

"It made us open to the counter-attack which is how they play."

He has no concerns over the character of the squad and expects more than a reaction when they play Wycombe Wanderers on Tuesday in the Papa John's Trophy and then Harrogate Town on Saturday, back in League Two.

"We’ll bounce," said Evans. "The players on the pitch have come off hurting and we’re hurting as a management team.

"Players on the bench will be hurting as they weren’t involved.

"We’re unified when we win and we’re unified when we lose.

"This is a sore one to take because we probably played better than in some away games.

"We’ll take the pain that it is causing, we’ll analyse it and concentrate on ourselves."