Neil Harris admitted that his Cambridge United side ‘shot themselves in the foot’ during this afternoon’s 3-2 defeat at home to Plymouth Argyle.

In recent outings, the U’s have made a habit of picking up points from losing positions, with Shayne Lavery making impressive cameos off the bench.

However, while Lavery scored for a third game running as a substitute, Cambridge ultimately gave themselves too much to do at a rain-soaked Cledara Abbey Stadium.

Harris, who has seen his side drop to sixth in the League One table, said: “We shot ourselves in the foot.

“Let’s look at the past week. Barnsley (last Saturday), we left it very late to come back because we gave a poor goal away from a set play. Tuesday night (against Wycombe Wanderers), we were disappointed with the manner of the goals we gave away. We gave ourselves a mountain to climb, and we got there right at the last knockings.

“But you can’t keep doing it. You can’t keep expecting to give cheap goals away, defend really poorly and naively.

“We’re just so young in the position and naive at times. We have to be better than that.

“We keep relying on Shayne Lavery and our attacking players to come back and get us points, but they can’t keep doing it.

“I felt for Jake Eastwood today. How good was he at times? How many saves did he make in the first half?

“We’re accepting giving three goals away. We’ve been talking that we’re 10 games unbeaten, it should be 11. We were better than Plymouth today, but we weren’t because they won 3-2. We’ve had 20 shots, eight on target, and we’ve not won or at least drawn a game at home.

“It’s not acceptable. I can’t accept five defeats in 44, I can’t accept that we’ve been unbeaten for 10. My job is to drive the standards, and my players have to defend better than they did today because that isn’t good enough.”