Dean Smith bemoaned unforced errors as the catalyst behind Norwich City’s Boxing Day defeat to Arsenal.
City were beaten 5-0 by the Gunners at Carrow Road, with Bukayo Saka (2), Kieran Tierney, Alexandre Lacazette and Emile Smith Rowe scoring the goals.
Speaking after the game, Dean said: “I’m bitterly disappointed. My overriding emotion is anger to be honest, because I haven’t seen that coming over the last week, we’ve trained okay.
“I know players have come onto the training pitch at different times because of illness or injury but that was too many unforced errors.
“They’ve got a left-footer playing on the right (Saka) and we spoke about keeping him on the outside, same as (Gabriel) Martinelli on the other side, and we’ve allowed him to come inside and score two goals.
“We’ve allowed Kieran Tierney to get on the outside of us and we don’t lay a glove on him. He runs from the halfway line, and we gave away two soft goals as well.
“There needs to be more drive. The players set the standards themselves in the first 4/5 games I had here, but the last two games have been way below that.
The match stretched City’s run without scoring to four and Dean says they need to be better right across the pitch.
“We didn’t do enough with our possession. I lost count at the amount of times we had a throw-in in the final third and we went back to our goalkeeper.
“Their decision making at the end of the day was much better than ours.
“Lack of confidence is part of it, there’s only one way you get that back and that is by performing and making sure you’re not making silly mistakes throughout a game.
“The players know that and understand that, I’ll debrief it myself. I’ll look back at my preparation and whether I got that right and got the team right. I’ll always do that.
“But I want the players to have a good, long, hard look as well. We all want to be a Premier League team this season and beyond.
“But we have to play better and make less mistakes than we have today.”
City now have less than 48 hours to prepare for their trip to Crystal Palace on Tuesday, and Dean offered his thoughts on the situation:
“It’s difficult, I said in my press conference before – we shouldn’t be playing a game within 48 hours. It’s ridiculous.
“I love the tradition of the Christmas fixtures and the festive period, but we have unique circumstances at the moment. Covid was never involved in the last 120 years of tradition.
“So, sense and accountability has to be taken in terms of not pushing players to the limit.”