CHRIS LAKEY Glenn Roeder has vowed to turn things around at Carrow Road, despite seeing the Canaries lurch another step closer to League One football. The 3-0 defeat at Plymouth Argyle condemned City to their seventh away defeat of the season and stretched their unbeaten league run to 11 matches.

CHRIS LAKEY

Glenn Roeder has vowed to turn things around at Carrow Road, despite seeing the Canaries lurch another step closer to League One football.

The 3-0 defeat at Plymouth Argyle condemned City to their seventh away defeat of the season and stretched their unbeaten league run to 11 matches.

But Roeder believes he has now seen enough in his three games at the helm to know which parts of the ailing body that is Norwich City need major surgery - and that he will succeed in resurrecting the team's fortunes.

"I am not down, I am disappointed, I am very angry," said Roeder. "I wouldn't say it was the worst, but what it has done, the lack of a performance here today has really sharpened my mind on what needs to be done.

"It is the third game since I have been here. You often learn more about your players in defeats. We have had a couple of defeats, Watford and here today at Plymouth, and I have got a clear picture of what I have inherited and the job in hand.

"I am a very positive person, I believe I will turn it around.

"Even before today, whatever the result had been, I have been clear in my own mind that without doubt this is the toughest, but it is going to be the most enjoyable, job I have done. I relish the challenge."

They are brave words from a man who admits his side put in a "shocking" team performance which was "completely and utterly unacceptable" and that some players lack the character for the job.

Roeder has seen tough times throughout his managerial career, at Gillingham, West Ham and Newcastle in particular, and the current job, with City now five points adrift at the bottom of the table, must surely rank up there with the worst of them.

"I don't live in a world of excuses and I am not trying to win brownie points with our supporters or anything, but, my God, our supporters have travelled all the way here to see a performance like that," bemoaned Roeder.

"I have seen a lot of things in the past couple of games that I don't like. There are certain things in their characters that I don't like, don't like at all. We need players and they have got to start taking individual responsibility for themselves. I wouldn't be very happy going back tonight sitting on that aeroplane, going back to my family.

"I am talking as an individual. Collectively it was a shocking performance. One or two of them did a bit better than others, I couldn't say that all were absolutely awful.

"As a team they were. There are one or two, three or four that did as well as they could, but were let down by others so you didn't see their true performance. But as a team collectively it was completely and utterly unacceptable for a Norwich City team.

"It needs a culture of winning and we have not got a culture of winning, we are a long, long way away from having a culture of winning.

"I am clear why we haven't got a culture of winning and that is for me to keep to myself and work on that over the coming weeks and months. It is certainly not going to be flipped over in a couple of weekends, that's for sure.

"Unless we find an edge to ourselves it is going to make it very difficult and I can't wait until tomorrow morning arrives and when we play Coventry in two weeks' time."

Roeder now has the luxury of the fortnight break for internationals to work on a squad that could be missing on-loan defender Martin Taylor, who suffered a groin injury a third of the way into Saturday's game, although the manager expects to have Dion Dublin and Luke Chadwick back in contention.