Norwich City captan Ivo Pinto admitted Norwich City only had themselves to blame for their sorry 2-1 defeat at bottom side Bolton Wanderers.
Goals from Gary Madine and Adam Armstrong late in the first half left Daniel Farke’s Canaries with a Macron Stadium mountain to climb – and substitute Josh Murphy’s goal deep in injury time was a mere consolation.
“We should not have lost that,” said Pinto. “When you look at the first 20-25 minutes, I think we were brilliant. And then to concede two goals as we conceded, I think that can’t happen. It can’t happen.
“When you play as good as we were playing in another away game, after two games that we have lost at home, you can’t concede these two goals.
“We have to score, put them on the back (foot) and after that you have to win the game because we were the better team. But when you concede two goals as we concede, I think we deserve it (defeat).”
Having enjoyed a lengthy unbeaten run through September and most of October, City have now lost their last three Championship games – defeat at Bolton bringing to an end a run of four successive away victories.
But more of a worry is City’s continuing struggle to score goals.
“It’s about every single player on the pitch,” added Pinto. “I think we have improved defensively, although these two goals were not good to concede. But I think we have improved – now we have to score more.
“When you look at last season we were scoring, scoring, scoring – and then conceding too many goals. This season I think we’re not scoring as many goals as we should, with our quality and with the chances we create.
“That’s it. That’s the Championship. When you play an away game and you have two or three chances to score and you don’t score, you can concede after that. And I think that’s the story of this game today.
“Of course that makes mistakes costly…and of course it puts a lot of pressure on us. But it’s not just on the defence. It’s on the whole team as well because we try to attack with all our players and defend with all our players. That’s why it’s a team.
“It puts the pressure on because if you keep scoring not as many goals as you should, when you concede one goal it’s always harder to get back into the game.”
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