Edinburgh scrum half Greig Laidlaw and his team-mates were left kicking themselves after going down 16-9 at Bath Rugby and dropping to the bottom of Pool 4 ahead of their return match at Murrayfield in Round 4.
Edinburgh remain the only Scottish team to qualify for the full knock-out stages of the Heineken Cup – which they did in 2004 – but now they have it all to do for any repeat.
"It was a case of near, yet so far," said Laidlaw.
"A lot of little errors cost us dearly and we were a few per cent off the pace.
"We were expecting Bath to come flying out – and they did. We failed to deal with that and it cost us. We were defending too much and struggled to put the phases together in attack.
"It was just the little things - two or three times we broke their line, but didn't finish them off.
"Our Pool is pretty exciting. Ulster blew it wide open with their win over Stade Francais and if we had won in Bath we would have been in a very good position.
