DAVID CUFFLEY City boss Glenn Roeder wants his players to bounce straight back from their Britannia Stadium body blow tomorrow night - by wiping out the memory of their worst 90 minutes since he took over as manager.

DAVID CUFFLEY

City boss Glenn Roeder wants his players to bounce straight back from their Britannia Stadium body blow tomorrow night - by wiping out the memory of their worst 90 minutes since he took over as manager.

The Canaries looked on course to make it seven points from three matches until Stoke's Richard Cresswell clinched a 2-1 win with a goal little more than a minute from time in Saturday's Coca-Cola Championship clash.

But Roeder was still full of praise for his team's display, angrily dismissing Stoke boss Tony Pulis' claim that his side should have won by five or six goals as “a load of rubbish”.

Now he wants victory over Plymouth Argyle at Carrow Road tomorrow night (7.45pm), not only to get City's survival bid back on course, but to bring swift atonement for their dismal defeat at Home Park last month.

He said: “This was a much improved performance to what we had against Plymouth and I am looking forward to playing Plymouth on Tuesday night at home so quickly after losing to them 3-0.

“The three performances since we were very poor against Plymouth have been hugely improved and I include an improvement in today's performance.

“We have lost the game, yes, but as a manager and as a coach you have to look deeper than just the result. You have to look at the performance, because if you get the performance right often enough you will get the result, more often than not, that you want.

“Some days you won't. Today we didn't take a point and I think we should have.

“I think Tony Pulis has just spoken a load of rubbish - write that. But he is entitled to his opinion, that is the beauty of this game, and I am entitled to mine.”

City led through the recalled Darren Huckerby after five minutes but fell to second-half goals from Leon Cort, less than 30 seconds after the restart, and Cresswell.

“The start and the finish of the second half ruined what potentially could have been an excellent day for us,” said Roeder.

“I would concede that Stoke put a lot of pressure on us in the second half, but I'd also say that we were by far the better team in the first half and I thought we let them off the hook a little bit just only being one up at half-time.

“Not to take anything from the game in the fashion that we did in the last minute is not a good experience, but we live to fight another day. They played with a lot of courage overall.”

Full-back Jon Otsemobor (migraine) and winger Luke Chadwick (shoulder injury) missed Saturday's game, while striker Jamie Cureton was left on the bench until 12 minutes from time. Huckerby, Lee Croft and Gary Doherty - given the right-back role on his first outing for nearly nine weeks - were recalled.

But bookings for Doherty and Darel Russell mean both players face a one-match ban for next Saturday's home game against Sheffield United after accumulating five yellow cards.

“Jon woke up with a migraine. There wasn't any possibility of playing. We let Jon stay in the hotel and rest. But I thought for his first game, Doc did well,” said Roeder.