John Mulvihill pinpointed individual defensive errors and a lacklustre attack after his side fell to a 19-11 defeat at the hand of Edinburgh on Saturday.
Wales’ Capital Region were unable to make it two from two in the Guinness PRO14, despite an early try from returning wing, Owen Lane.
Guinness Man of the Match, Jaco van der Walt, steered the visitors to victory, with a Mark Bennett try rounding up a second successive win for Richard Cockerill’s men.
However, Mulvihill does believe there were positives in his side’s performance, but says they didn’t mount enough pressure on the Scottish outfit.
“We were pretty poor individually in defence tonight and I thought we were a bit lacklustre in attack,” said the Cardiff Blues head coach.
“There were a few anomalies in there, like Matthew Morgan who gave us a spark, and I thought our set-piece was really good with 100 per cent in the line-outs.
“But we didn’t consistently mount pressure on the opposition. We had a great start and scored a try, but the next time we played we kicked the ball and gave possession away.
“We didn’t mount phase after phase in attack, and that’s what we’re good at, so that’s disappointing.
“We looked at their team during the week and knew they were going to have a couple of special players. We needed to go in well against those boys and clearly we didn’t. That probably cost us in the end.
“We’ll probably look at that later in the weekend, when the emotion comes out of it, and see that we did alright. But there were some basic errors on both sides of the ball that we just can’t have.
“Only when they made that line break at the end to score did I think we’d lose this one. I thought we were in it throughout.
“Even after that break, it was 19-11, and scoring immediately would given us a chance, like we did last year, but we ran out of spark tonight.”
Next up for Mulvihill’s side is a trip to Scotstoun Stadium to take on Glasgow on Saturday.
The Warriors have suffered back-to-back defeat in the campaign so far, having lost to Toyota Cheetahs and Scarlets in the opening rounds.
Mulvihill is wary of a backlash from Dave Rennie’s side, but has backed his side’s character to bounce back from tonight’s defeat.
The Australian added: “We need to trust these boys to turn it around, and they will because they’re hard on themselves and with each other, and I’m sure we’ll bounce back next week.
“It’s going to be a massive challenge up in Glasgow. We got close to them a couple of times last year.
“But they’ll be wounded after the last two weeks and they tried really hard against Scarlets last night, and were unlucky not to win it at the death.
“We know they’ve got a lot of players away in the World Cup, but their strength-in-depth up there is so good that they’ll get back up next week.
“Defensively we need to be on the money next week, otherwise it’s going to be a long night.”