CITY boss Glenn Roeder pointed to some shocking defending by his Canary side in the opening minutes of the second half against Swansea which saw the Welshmen score two soft goals to take a stranglehold on today's Championship clash.

In particular, Roeder felt Swansea's second goal, scored by Darren Pratley from a corner inside a minute of the restart, was down to City defenders not doing their jobs properly.

He told First News: "It was just diabolically poor play and poor defending, we work on set plays a lot both in an attacking mode and as far as defending set plays are concerned. The player who is asked to play in front or level with the near post should ever let anyone get in front of you - you make sure your body shape is right, you see the ball and you see what's going on behind you. If anyone tries to break in front of you, you block him and you remain in front of that first attacking player and we didn't do that.

"The player who was told to mark the goalscorer was marking on the wrong side and the player who was told to play in the hole allowed the player to get in front and flick the ball on. It's totally unacceptable, we work hard on it and it's so disappointing when they don't do as they're told. All we can do is continue to work hard at Colney and hopefully the penny will drop."

Roeder felt City had enjoyed some commanding spells in the match - especially in the first half - but having taken the lead through Arturo Lupoli they failed to press their advantage home and were punished.

"We played some very good football today, people won't remember that - they'll remember five or six minutes when Swansea scored three goals and they will go away with the memory. That is life, that's how it is in football but I have to look deeper than that. We deservedly took the lead, we could have been in front before that and we could have scored more than one goal in the first half, and then two minutes before half-time we concede a goal by them getting behind us. Jason Scotland made a terrific run, he took Doherty into the near post and it was absolutely perfect.

"Within two minutes of the second half we've done what we've done too often this year, we've shot ourselves in the foot and given ourselves a mountain to climb."

Asked if Norwich needed to replicate the run of form that Roeder and his staff helped to engineer when they first joined the Club last season Roeder replied: "I've certainly got the experience to do that and I'm confident we'll do it again, we're not in quite as bad a position as we were last year. It's still not a good position that we're in, I didn't expect us to be here after this number of games, but I'm not a person who feels sorry for himself or lays the blame at other people's feet. You have to take it on the chin and carry on working harder than you're already working.

"We have got to stop giving away goals, as simple as that. We've only had a couple of clean sheets this year, which is ridiculous with the players that we've got. You can't concede three goals at home and expect to win 4-3, it happens once in a blue moon, we have to be much more clinical in front of goal."