Legend questions desire of Canaries to ‘make your goal your castle’

Daniel Farke’s side slumped to a 3-0 defeat to Southampton as the Premier League season resumed at Carrow Road on Friday and Newman was there to watch the disappointment unfold.

“Make your goal your castle, you have to defend it and die for it,” said Newman, who started all six of City’s Uefa Cup games in 1993.

“Whether it’s a tackle, whether it’s a block, like Max Aarons blocked one late in the game, that’s what you need all the time.

“Those goals, Danny Ings is shooting from inside the box, no one is within about two yards of him, how did he get there? There’s no compactness and when there is, you’ve got to win the ball.

“It was like a knife through butter at times.”

With three of their rivals also losing at home over the weekend, City remain six points from safety and bottom of the table, after four defeats in their last five games.

“They folded too easily,” Newman told former team-mate Darren Eadie on the NR1 Live show on the Canaries’ website.

“Where they are in the league, they should be scrapping, fighting, throwing their bodies in and go down with a fight. It felt like, the second half especially, that they sort of went out with a whimper.”

MORE: Six things from Norwich City’s damaging defeat to Southampton

Newman made 249 appearances for Norwich between 1991 and 1997, scoring 17 goals and playing in defence and midfield. After spells as a manager at Cambridge and Southend, the former Bristol City favourite now works in a senior scouting role for Manchester City - and expects Farke to make changes when Everton arrive on Wednesday.

“The manager will have seen that and would have seen what he’s got to do for Wednesday,” he continued. “Whether it’s bring Adam Idah in from the start, whose got pace, enthusiasm, youthfulness, plays without fear, it might be that way.

“We know that players don’t come out and mean to lose the game, they don’t do it on purpose, but they need to show more solidity in that back-line because the Premier League is an unforgiving place to play.

Ben Godfrey desperately tries to block a Danny Ings shot during Norwich City's home defeat to Southampton Picture: Mike Egerton/PA Wire (Image: PA Wire)

“If you haven’t got that desire to defend your goal out of possession, to get back into a position where you become compact and difficult to break through, you haven’t got a chance in this league.”