Norwich defender Sam Byram has admitted his side have been too easy to play against so far this season.
The full-back made his first start since February 2020 in Tuesday’s 3-0 loss at Crystal Palace, which made it five defeats in a row for the Canaries.
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A mixture of illness and injuries meant boss Dean Smith was without 10 first-teamers, which saw the former Leeds star forced into action from the off having only fully recovered this month from a hamstring issue that had plagued him for the best part of two years.
“I feel good. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” Byram said during his broadcast interviews at Selhurst Park.
“It’s hard to think about after that performance. It’s something that probably won’t sink in for a while until we’ve put this right.”
Byram went close to marking his second appearance of the season with a goal but saw a header late in the first half hit the crossbar.
At that point Norwich were already three down after strikes from Crystal Palace trio Odsonne Edouard, Jean-Philippe Mateta and Jeffrey Schlupp.
The opener occurred after Kenny McLean fouled Will Hughes inside the area and the second following a quick break from a Canaries corner while the third was a direct result of the visitors giving away possession inside their own half.
🗣 Sam Byram’s post-match thoughts following today’s game ⬇️#NCFC | #CRYNOR pic.twitter.com/lkLKeUVfwE
— Norwich City FC (@NorwichCityFC) December 28, 2021
Versatile defender Byram added: “We gave ourselves our own problems, from our corners and our free-kicks. We’ve made it too easy for them to counter-attack.
“We said before the game we needed to be hard to play against – we’ve done the opposite to be honest.
“As a team we need to be stronger all over the pitch. It’s about the basics. The team haven’t done that.
“We’ve created good chances but a lot of them came when we were 3-0 down. The next goal might have changed things. In the second half we were better, but when Palace are 3-0 up they took their foot off the gas.”
Eagles goal scorer Schlupp was pleased they were able to bounce back from a Boxing Day loss at Tottenham and especially with key men Conor Gallagher and Wilfried Zaha unavailable.
He said: “We obviously needed to bounce back well from the game against Tottenham, which we lost. We managed to do that very well.
“It shows of course, especially in this period where you have a lot of games coming thick and fast, that we have good squad depth.
“We’ve shown that again – we rotated a few players and players came in who haven’t played as much as others and we’ve got two massive players missing for us but we still managed to put on a good performance to win 3-0.”