The frustration of a disallowed equaliser may still have been raw but Todd Cantwell felt Norwich City took a big step forward during their dramatic 2-1 defeat to Leicester.

After a 3-0 home defeat to Liverpool and a 5-0 thrashing at Manchester City, confidence was boosted by a 6-0 romp against Bournemouth in the League Cup in midweek.

That gave way to a much more intense performance, undermined by defensive mistakes and a marginal VAR decision to disallow a second goal, with the Carrow Road faithful making their appreciation of the efforts clear at full-time.

“I felt like we went toe-to-toe with them for most of the game, if not all of the game, to be honest,” said Cantwell.

“They’re one of the best teams in the country and I felt we gave them a real good run for it.”

An unforced error from Brandon Williams led to Jamie Vardy opening the scoring in the seventh minute but Teemu Pukki equalised with a penalty before half-time.

Marc Albrighton’s fine finish won the game in the 74th minute, after some slack defending, but a Kenny McLean header from a Milot Rashica corner six minutes later was ruled out by VAR with Cantwell in an offside position.

“I think we definitely need to be positive,” the attacking midfielder continued. “It’s actually quite strange because I feel like I’d be annoyed if we’d have got a point today, that’s how it feels.

“To not get anything on the table after the first three games is not what we wanted but we have played three of the best teams in the league.

“There’s a lot of positives to take from it.”

The 23-year-old hadn’t yet seen replays when speaking to the media but was adjudged to be offside as he was active due to being so close to keeper Kasper Schmeichel.

Had he been to the Dane’s side then he probably wouldn’t have been able to stop the header anyway but, by the letter of the law, Cantwell was in Schmeichel’s line of sight.

“I haven’t seen it back yet but I am a bit confused by it. I didn’t touch Schmeichel at all, he didn’t try and push me out of the way or anything,” said Cantwell.

“My understanding was that if I didn’t intervene with the play then I couldn’t be offside.

“I just don’t get it because I don’t think he could have come out and stopped it.

“I haven’t watched it back yet, I don’t want to say something that will get me in trouble, so I’ll just leave it there.”

Cantwell was also booked for dissent during City’s remonstrations after the VAR intervention and admitted frustration got the better of him.

“I felt like we deserved it, we had a good reaction after going behind again and for me, it is a perfectly good goal,” he added.

“We had a couple of throw-in decisions that were questionable and then for the goal to be disallowed, I was very frustrated at that point and it was unavoidable.”

NCFC EXTRA: Norwich City boss unhappy at crucial ‘offside’ call