Daniel Farke felt Norwich City were bullied by Southampton in a 2-1 Premier League defeat on Wednesday night at St Mary’s.

The Canaries were punished by two first half set pieces converted by Danny Ings and Ryan Bertrand before Teemu Pukki replied with his eighth top flight goal of the season.

"We were bullied twice on set pieces. To be 2-0 down at half-time for a young newly-promoted side is tough," said Farke. "We are disappointed to return home with no points. It was a game of two halves. A perfect example of why we need to stick to our principles.

"In the first half, we were not brave enough to play our football. Southampton is a good pressing side, aggressive and well-structured but we were not brave enough to by-pass them. Or brave enough to use some risky options. We chose too often to play long balls and that is not our style.

"In the first half in general play they didn't have many chances. But we didn't have the control we needed.

"We have a lot of small technical players and we are not going to be the best team at defending set pieces.

"I was pretty pleased with the reaction of my team. It was even harder to do what we did in the second half. We started to dominate possession. We had many shots, several chances. We deserved to travel back with at least a draw on the evidence of that second half. Sam Byram had a couple of chances late in the game, a good situation to equalise, and that would have been a precious point for us."

Farke revealed Norwich had spent plenty of time in the build up trying to nullify the Saints' press.

"Sometimes it is not that easy to explain," he said. "When the first two or three passes are not good enough it motivates the opponent to be even more intense in their pressing. We struggled a bit with the confidence.

"We spent two days preparing with the idea of how we beat the press. We had a clear plan to do this but it is one thing to develop a plan and another for young players to always be on the top of their game.

"We tried to switch to a three man formation in the first half to get a bit more control in the game, which we did, but even then we were not able to create more chances so we made some tactical and personnel changes and it helped us a lot."