It wasn't the highest scoring loss in rugby league history, but it sure felt like it for Parramatta coach Daniel Anderson.

Parramatta's 38-34 defeat to Penrith at CUA Stadium on Sunday ranks as the third highest score for a losing team in league history and for Anderson that simply is not good enough.

Especially for a team who took a 34-32 lead with 10 minutes to go but couldn't hold on and now see their NRL finals' chances drift significantly to be more than two wins outside the top eight.

The Eels are now 13th on the NRL table on 15 competition points.

If the Eels had won, they'd have jumped to tenth on the NRL table and sit just one point outside the top eight.

"We should have hung on, simple as that," said Anderson.

"That is the disappointing aspect that we've scored 34 points and not won a game.

"That is not good enough for a top eight team.

"We haven't spoken about the (top) eight too much. We have played well for a while now but we haven't won two games in a row on the back of playing well.

"We're still to do that ... if we just lose two win one we're not going to be good enough.

"We need to string a lot of wins together. We have shown the attitude to do that, we haven't shown the execution yet."

Anderson blamed poor defensive decisions and intensity for the Eels' loss, although he admitted three-try hero Michael Jennings was the difference for the winning Panthers.

"We didn't defend well in the middle. I would be surprised if we missed 10 tackles but they scored from six of the missed tackles," he said.

"They took opportunities and we missed bad tackles today through the middle. It's been unlike us ... it was unlike us to concede tries without making them work harder for it.

"We missed very poor tackles ... we basically missed big plays."

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