Pierre Fonkeu and Carlton Morris made their injury comebacks as Norwich City Under-23s were beaten 4-1 by a Southampton U23s team featuring former Canaries keeper Fraser Forster.

Fonkeu made his first appearance of the campaign after injury, turning home an Adam Idah cross in the 78th minute, only for the Saints to add a fourth five minutes later.

The 21-year-old Belgian replaced fellow returning striker Morris at the break, returning from an ankle injury picked up in U23s action in January.

City U23s coach David Wright said: “I’m really pleased for Pierre. Obviously he’s been out for a long time, he came on and hustled and bustled, he worked really hard and got his reward with the goal so it’s really pleasing.

“Also Carlton got 45 minutes on his return back from a lengthy injury as well, so they’re the two pluses that we can take away from the game.”

Former England keeper Forster, 31, is out of first team contention at Southampton. He was a key part of City’s League One title success in 2009-10, while on loan from Newcastle, and helped the hosts seal a comfortable Premier League Two win, putting the Saints top of Division Two with two games still to play.

The young Canaries have two matches to push clear of the bottom two and into mid-table, with a Carrow Road game against Middlesbrough approaching on Friday (7pm), with eighth still possible.

“It was quite disappointing really,” Wright continued, speaking to City’s official website. “We had a game plan, the boys understood what we wanted to do, we discussed this before and at half-time but they weren’t brave enough to carry it out.

“They were a really high aggressive team and we knew that we would have to be brave on the ball to get that first pass out. We needed to pass through the press, but once we got through that press we would be through to that back three pretty quickly and unfortunately we just couldn’t get that pass through.”

City U23s: McCracken; Omobamidele, Lomas, Jones (C), Payne; Thorvaldsson, Milovanovic, Scully (McIntosh 82), Coley; Idah, Morris (Fonkeu 46). Unused Subs: Johnson (GK)