Norwich City head coach Dean Smith saw two sides to his team in Sunday’s 2-1 defeat away to Leeds United.
“Mixed emotions really,” he said. “I wasn’t happy with the first half performance again, but was pleased with the second half performance and felt we should have got something out of it. Ultimately, both boxes have cost us and that’s why we are where we are in the league at the moment.
“With our final delivery, we had some good moments in the first half, even though I thought they were the better team, but our final ball wasn’t quite good enough. It was the same in the second half.
“With their first goal, the ball has been played to Patrick Bamford and he’s offside. He makes us head it. The game knows it’s offside, unfortunately the law doesn’t.
“The other disappointing thing is they ran past our players to get on the end of it and score the goal. That’s the thing that hurts more, because we have to work the other side of hard in this tough level. The players have earned the right to be at this level, but in those big moments we have to be better.
“We’ve got back into the game in the 92nd minute and from one big lump we don’t win the first header or the second ball and it’s cost us a point.
“We wanted to try to win the game and felt at that period that we were on the front foot. We were the team causing problems. They’re always a danger on the counter-attack because we were taking risks at that time as we needed to.
“So disappointed to concede a goal like that at the end. We had a chance at the end with Teemu and the keeper makes a really good save in the 96th minute.
“We’ve had another overturned penalty decision, which I’m not sure if it gets overturned if it’s Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea or one of the bigger teams, but unfortunately that’s where we are.
“You know as soon as the referee goes over to the screen that he’s changing his mind because he’s been told to. There haven’t been too many referees going over to the monitor and sticking with their decision.
“I wouldn’t have liked to have seen it given against me, but I can’t see where else Rashica can put his foot as he’s about to shoot and it’s a good chance for us. Luke Ayling slides in and gets nowhere near the ball. Rashica goes down, so I don’t see how that’s a clear and obvious error by the referee, but unfortunately that’s how they deemed it.”
Mathias Normann came on for Lukas Rupp at half-time, before Jonathan Rowe was introduced during the second half.
“They made an impact,” Smith said. “Mathias is fighting for form at the moment so we decided to leave him out. Rupp has not had many minutes and I just felt he was struggling to get to the pace of the game so we made those changes.
“Rowe came on and I thought he was bright and lively. Maybe we should have brought him on a little bit earlier but, in the ascendancy, it was hard to know what to change at that time.”
City now face three weeks without a game, a number of the first-team squad heading away on international duty.
“It’s a massive month now,” Smith said. “It’s going to be a tough three weeks without a game. You want games to try to bounce back, but it will give us some time, certainly this week, to work with the players on what we’re after come April. Then we lose 14 or so players during the international break and only have got eight training, so it’s a tough period for all.”