"It wasn't a punishment although people are going to see it as that," he told the Western Mail.
"We have a Tuesday game and I wanted the players to get Preston out of their system and focus on Leicester. We looked at what went wrong against Preston on video. It was constructive as well as critical.
"We could have done this on Sunday or Monday. I chose to do it on Sunday and have a light training session on Monday. I thought it was better for the players to get Preston out of their system straight away. That means we have two days to focus on Leicester."
City play their game in hand tonight at Leicester. A win would see City possibly needing only a draw from the remaining three games to stay up. 4 points for City in this weeks games v Leicester and Reading would mean Brighton having to win 2 of their 3 remaining games.
Lose tonight and we are head to head with the Seagulls over the final three matches with City ahead slightly on goal difference. We have the chance tonight to make the job a hell of a lot easier. Let's do what we did at Stoke and not what happened at Preston.