Johannes Hoff Thorup felt Bristol City “punished” his Norwich City side for their small mistakes as the Robins headed into the international break with what the Canaries boss felt was a “strange” win over his side at Ashton Gate.
Liam Manning’s Reds stretched their unbeaten run in the Championship to seven matches as they beat Norwich 2-1 on Friday evening, with first half goals from Mark Sykes and Nahki Wells ensuring that Borja Sainz’s late effort was little more than a consolation.
Sykes gave City the lead after just six minutes. The Ireland international brilliantly cut in from the right flank before curling an effort into the top left corner from the edge of the penalty area after Rob Dickie had won back possession on the halfway line. 17 minutes later, Wells doubled the home side’s advantage as he slotted home his eighth of the season with a low finish following some smart footwork from Jason Knight on the wing.
Although Thorup was keen to credit Sykes for his “brilliant” strike and Wells for his “clever” finish, the Canaries boss felt his side were unfortunate to see the Robins capitalise on their only real errors in the opening 45 minutes.
“It was a strange game in many ways I would say,” he explained after the full-time whistle. “Also, to go directly to it, the mood in our dressing room is completely different to how it was after our game on Tuesday night where it was flat, it was frustrated, it was annoyed, it was all those negative feelings, especially based on the second half of that game.
“But it was a little bit different today because I think in many ways, the players, they feel they gave it a try and they actually did a lot of good things in the game. They created, actually I would say more chances than you can expect away from home, also normally chances that we would score. But it seems like we get really punished really, really hard for the small mistakes we do in the game. The first goal tells the story where we make a mistake, a passing mistake in the final third of the pitch and still, it ends with, of course, it is a brilliant finish, but it ends down in our box where we have to defend that situation. It’s something we definitely have to avoid so that’s where we are so it’s strange in many ways.
“We have to kill the situation higher up the pitch,” Thorup continued. “I’m not a big fan of sitting here and saying we have to make a foul, but sometimes we have to make a foul or at least we have to stay in the duel for a longer time. We lose two, or three players in the middle of the pitch in that situation and then we have to drop back and defend lower. Of course, in the final situation, we need to lead them outside instead of inside, that’s the small defensive details in that situation that need to be better.
“Then of course, the second goal where we lose it but it’s still on the sideline where we lose it. We have four players surrounding one player where that should in most of the situations hopefully lead to us winning the ball back or at least again making a foul or they get a throw-in.
“Instead, we invite them inside, we invite them into the box and of course, he strikes the ball in between the legs of Seamus as I saw it to begin with where it’s a clever finish. It’s a good finish but we’re really, really punished hard for those two situations where we get it wrong in the game. On the other side, we didn’t manage to execute on some of the good chances that we also produced and created. Of course, we were annoyed with that situation and to be honest, we were also probably a little all over the place for the last 20 minutes of the first half.”
Norwich have now won just one of their last eight Championship matches. That poor run of form has seen the Canaries slip to 13th in the Championship and eight points adrift of City and the play-off positions in Thorup’s first season at Carrow Road.
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Although both the supporters and the manager are frustrated that they haven’t been able to kick on in the race for the top-six this season, the 36-year-old is insistent his side is heading in the right direction even if things could take longer than initially expected.
“We go away to Bristol City tonight, a place where they get a lot of their wins here at home and we create close to three expected goals and create I don’t know how many big chances in the game that we would normally score,” Thorup said.
“I would prefer to be in this position where I can see that many of the things that we do are in a very good way and of course, having to fix some of the moments where we need to be better, especially defensively in moments than being in a situation where we don’t create chances, we don’t score goals, we cannot dominate games.
“That would be a completely different situation to be in so I will stay optimistic because I know there are a lot of good things going on but I’m also a realist as you know that it will probably take more time than we expected half a year ago.”