Daniel Farke jumped to the defence of the ‘outstanding’ Tim Krul after the Norwich City keeper’s gaffe opened the floodgates in a 4-0 Premier League defeat to Arsenal on Wednesday night.

The Canaries’ survival hopes suffered another blow with an error-strewn display at the Emirates, capped by Krul gifting Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang his first goal when he dallied on the ball inside his own penalty area.

The Dutchman has been a standout performer in City’s difficult league campaign – a point Farke was keen to highlight.

“I don’t blame Tim at all. He has played an outstanding season. A real leader in our group, probably our most consistent player. But even he is allowed to make a mistake. We are all human.

“It doesn’t help of course in the game. It was a crucial moment.

“Tim is self-critical. He knows he made a big mistake. It was the same in the second half. We forced their keeper to make some saves at 2-0 down after half-time and then we made a big assist for the third goal.

“We are not naïve. We know at this level we have to play without mistakes.

“For the first and third goals we invited Arsenal to score and they have the quality to punish us. We can’t complain about the loss. We made too many mistakes.”

Farke made a triple substitution at the break in a failed bid to spark a revival.

“We will never give up. As long as we have a chance we keep going,” he said. “We have been honest and realistic about our chances. I am not going to come out and say we will win five of the next six. Only that we get our performance back to a level we can win points.

“We knew how important this game was. If we had won we were back in the mix.

“When you lose 4-0 you have to speak about your mistakes. I am not willing to come out with fighting messages. Let’s concentrate on ourselves and make sure in the next game we are back on our best level. That is my topic now for the next days. Not talking about closing points gaps.

“I got the feeling once we made this mistake for the first goal we felt a bit too sorry for ourselves.

“The confidence dipped and the aggressiveness was not there. So I wanted to send a sign. We made changes and changed the base formation to attack the game. If we lose, we lose but let’s not raise the white flag.”