FRUSTRATED Steve Cook labelled Cherries' first-half display against Wolves as "not acceptable" and "inexcusable".

Eddie Howe's men trailed 2-0 at the break following strikes from Joao Moutinho and Raul Jimenez, while captain Simon Francis was also sent off.

Cherries showed a marked improvement after the restart, bringing the score back to 2-1 through Cook's header, but they fell short of taking anything from the game.

Speaking to afcbTV, Cook said: "I don't know what the first-half performance was. Take the red card out of it, it was not acceptable.

"The second half obviously gives us a glimmer of positivity, but ultimately we could've taken something from the game.

"But when you concede from two set plays like we did, switching off for the second one, it's inexcusable. The first free-kick was an unbelievable finish but the way they got that free-kick was poor as well. It's very disappointing."

Asked what went wrong in the first half, Cook added: "Everything. The levels of the commitment, we didn't look after the ball, didn't have any options, no movement. Everything that could go wrong in a half did for us.

"They didn't do anything special, they didn't score from a nice bit of play or they didn't slice through us, it was just ourselves creating those chances. Inexcusable, (we've got) a lot to do, we know what run we've got ahead of us now.

"We wanted to start it on a positive note, the only thing we can do now is take that 45 minutes into Tottenham (next week)."

He continued: "There were opportunities to win the ball from them and we were shying out of tackles in the first half.

"Whoever plays for this club, (there is) the level that we expect. We didn't do that in the first half, in the second half we did and that's the benchmark."