Chris Lakey Grant Holt was one of the few players prepared to put his head above the parapet as the dust settled on City's horror performance. The Canaries striker was quick to offer an apology to the angry fans and just as quick to claim the 7-1 defeat to Colchester was a one-off.

Chris Lakey

Grant Holt was one of the few players prepared to put his head above the parapet as the dust settled on City's horror performance.

The Canaries striker was quick to offer an apology to the angry fans and just as quick to claim the 7-1 defeat to Colchester was a one-off.

"You can understand why people are frustrated," he said. "They pay their money, they come and watch and you get that - but it's early.

"We have got to apologise for what happened today, that's fair enough, but hopefully when we come back into town in the next few weeks you'll see a different team and hopefully with the 45 games we have left there will be different scenes here."

City are away to Yeovil in the Carling Cup tomorrow, then at Exeter on Saturday for the resumption of the League One campaign and travel to Brentford next Tuesday before returning to Carrow Road on August 22 - by which time Holt expects the "real Norwich City" to have emerged.

"You have got to recover, you've been beat - it doesn't matter if you get beat 7-1 or you get done 1-0 you have been beaten by Colchester and regardless of what the scoreline was, that's more disappointing," he said.

"But if we got beaten 1-0 today we'd still be saying the same things now, so we have to bounce back on Tuesday, we have a game in the League Cup where we know we have got to go there and do something, play better than we did today, not give cheap goals away and build from there.

"That's the nature of this league - you play a lot of games quickly but the opportunity is to go there on Tuesday, to put in a performance that is worthy of this football club and worthy of the fans who will travel there."

Holt says there will be no repeats of Saturday's debacle.

"I think it's one of those days," he said. "Everyone has them. Obviously we have been done 7-1 and I can't see that happening again, but we have just got to bounce back now, we have to get on with it.

"We have a lot of games coming up to erase that and I'm sure that by the time we get back home, a couple of wins under our belt and this will be forgotten about.

"Of course, it was a shame. I thought we started off quite well, to be fair. The first 10 minutes I thought we were better, but obviously if you give cheap goals away at any level you are not going to get back into the game and we have got to learn when we do concede to shut up shop a little bit and relax for the next five or 10 minutes and we didn't do that today. We gave cheap goals away and it wasn't just the defending, we were sloppy all over the park."

So where do City start?

"You start by not giving cheap goals away, that's where you start," Holt said. "We can't do that. As a team we weren't good on the ball, we gave it away, but those are things you have got to learn from. We can't just roll over now and say, 'that's the season finished'.

"Fans obviously have got the right to be disappointed, but we know we are good enough, we have a good enough squad and I'm sure in a few months time we will be having different conversations."