Drury: It was embarrassing

JONATHAN REDHEAD City skipper Adam Drury today admitted his team's 5-0 humiliation at Stoke City was nothing short of “embarrassing”.

JONATHAN REDHEAD

City skipper Adam Drury today admitted his team's 5-0 humiliation at Stoke City was nothing short of “embarrassing”.

Drury was one of many City players who had a torrid time against the Potters and struggled to contain the lively Luke Chadwick on Stoke's right flank in Saturday's Coca-Cola Championship hammering.

The left-back admitted everything went wrong for the Canaries, but like manager Peter Grant, refused to blame the new-look formation for the defeat.

“Everything went wrong really from start to finish,” he said. “We had a spell for about 20 to 25 minutes in the second half where I thought we played a bit better but we were 2-0 down by then. It's hard to talk about it, to be honest, it hurts that much. Embarrassing.

“People will look at the formation, but everyone knew their jobs, or said they knew their jobs when we went out on the pitch. So the only way you get through that is to ask individual players 'Did they really know what they were doing?'

“Apart from that, if everyone says they know their jobs, you've just got to rely on the players to go out there and do it. After that we just didn't do it well enough - that was the problem.

“It did look better until they got the penalty and that killed the game off.

“Obviously, when you're two down it is hard then because you're chasing the game and at the same time the third goal kills the game off. It's just massively disappointing.”

It was City's first Championship defeat since Nigel Worthington was sacked four weeks ago.

Drury said the only positive was that they have a home game against Colchester United tomorrow to put things right, but it would be difficult to recover for the game.

“It's not easy, but the gaffer said to us we've got to come in fresh Monday morning, forget about it and go from there, because if you keep dwelling on it, in the end you're going to beat yourself up so much then you won't perform on Tuesday.

“We've got put it right and make sure we get it right for Tuesday night, because if we keep dwelling on it then we'll only get ourselves in a bit of a rut and we've got to make sure it's a one-off.

“It's a team thing. We've got to do it as a team. You can't pick out people individually and say you're not it, and you're not doing it. We've got to be better. That's what it's all about.”

Drury said the team were “gutted” with the result and had sympathy for City's large and loyal following.

“Obviously I feel for them, having to watch that,” he said.