Daniel Farke refuses to kick his Norwich City side when they are down in the wake of an abject 5-1 Premier League loss to Aston Villa.

Farke suffered the heaviest home defeat of his tenure on Saturday in his 100th league game in charge of the injury-ravaged Canaries.

The City chief was without nine senior players while the likes of Jamal Lewis, Todd Cantwell and captain Ben Godfrey all had fitness issues going into the latest Carrow Road duel.

Godfrey will have hernia surgery later this week in Germany and faces a race to be fit for the trip to Bournemouth after the international break.

"If the squad was fully fit then I would be the first to criticise them but not in these circumstances.

"It's more a case I need to protect them," said Farke.

"It's important to back them in this moment and of course I could speak about the mistakes we made in defending the crosses and the first and second goal, and also mistakes we had with losing the ball for the other goals.

"I didn't want to speak too much beforehand about injuries because the players then have an excuse.

"The most important thing is the spirit and to stick together. We spoke before the season that there will be difficult periods. If I'm really honest I didn't expect that there would be such a situation with so many players injured.

"It's easy to speak about sticking together but you have to prove it in real life and this exactly what we have to do right now."

Farke did warn his squad they need to wise up quickly after crashing to a fifth league defeat in six to big-spending Villa.

"They will be punished after conceding five goals and there were some scenes where they should have done better, definitely," he said. "They tried everything and for that I'm struggling to blame them too much because even in the end they tried to score and we're pretty close to a second goal."