MATTY Platt is urging City to channel their Colchester frustration to ensure they avoid another pointless away trip this weekend.

The Bantams head for Hartlepool still chasing their first reward on the road after two last-gasp losses.

They were beaten in stoppage time for the second time this season on Tuesday and Platt admits that is not good enough.

“It’s frustrating as a defender,” he said. “As a team, we need to cut those mistakes out.

“We can’t afford to keep conceding from set-pieces, we know they are massive in this league.

“Going forward, we need to learn quickly to stop that.

“We’ve got to use that frustration, put it into energy and make sure we get it right on the training pitch and ultimately against Hartlepool.”

Pools are without a win so far – but City also handed a first league victory of the season to Colchester and Platt insists they must heed the warnings.

“We know it’s still very early days but we want to be putting teams away.

“The performance on Tuesday warranted a different result. But it didn’t and we need to learn from that and put it right this weekend.

“We knew Colchester’s game plan was to stay in it as long as they could and try to nick one at the end. They’ve managed to do it.

“We need to learn to make it count when we’re on top and if we don’t manage to get the goal, then to at least see the game out.

“The most frustrating thing is that we hadn’t learned our lesson from what happened to us at Barrow.

“It was a different scenario but we still need to be a little bit cuter to make sure we go home at least with a point.”

The Bantams were infuriated with the performance of referee Carl Brook and his decision not to award a penalty when Lee Angol went down in the box late in the game.

But Platt knows they cannot get too hung up about decisions from officials.

He added: “We don’t want to be blaming referees. We’ve got to take it out of their hands and not give them a chance to dictate how the result goes.

“We know we get some dodgy decisions at this level but we’ve got to take responsibility more.

“The old saying is that these things will level out over the season. Managers are always talking about it.

"Whether it’s true or not, we’ll never know but you would hope so.

“We need to take the positives from our recent games. We’d won our last couple in the cup and the league and I don’t think the actual performance at Colchester was too bad.

“It was just another case where we didn’t take our chances and then got caught out right at the end.

“We’ve got to keep doing the good bits and just tidy up on those set-pieces.”