Norwich City head coach Dean Smith gave canaries.co.uk his reaction to relegation from the Premier League after Saturday’s 2-0 defeat at Aston Villa.
“I’m disappointed for a lot of people - the owners, the supporters and everyone to do with the football club,” he said. “I take part of the responsibility because I’ve come in here to try to keep us up and unfortunately we haven’t done enough, but that isn’t down to the performance today.
“Unfortunately, in a lot of the bigger games this season, we’ve not quite reached the levels that we need to. I thought the Brentford game was a pivotal game for us and I felt we needed to keep Watford and Brentford in and around us, so it made it very difficult from there. We’ve had chances but we haven’t taken the ones that we need.
“The fans have been outstanding. People are talking about the word apathy with our football club and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I saw the supporters out there today backing the football club, I saw the players fighting until the end.
“Ultimately, we haven’t been good enough and the quality of our squad to stay in the Premier League hasn’t been good enough, so we’ll learn from it. We have to come back stronger for the last four games and then next season.
“It’s a one club county and a one city club. We have to go and be together in what we do now and move forward together.”
As for the game itself, Smith didn’t have many complaints with his side’s performance.
“I thought we played well in the first half,” he said. “Pierre \[Lees-Melou\] had a really big chance which he put wide. They put a ball over the top, showing what a 30 million pound striker can do, and unfortunately there’s a slip from us but then I felt we should have had a penalty because Brandon Williams got kicked in the face when he headed it over.
“We had a similar one against Brentford and had a penalty against us, but we kept going and had good possession but probably didn’t create as many chances as we’d have liked in the second half. I certainly can’t question the commitment today.”
Josh Sargent replaced Lees-Melou in the second half after returning from injury but was forced off for Lukas Rupp moments later.
“It was always going to be a bit of a punt with Josh but we felt we might need his physicality late on in the game and he just re-aggravated his injury,” Smith explained. “It’s nothing too serious. Pierre got caught as well so we wanted to get some fresh legs on for him.”