Experience is the quality King's Lynn Town manager Ian Culverhouse is searching for as he fine-tunes his squad ahead of the new season.
The Linnets stepped up their pre-season preparations with a prestige friendly against a Norwich City XI at The Walks on Wednesday night, losing 4-1 to a Canaries team packed with young talent.
Lynn had taken the lead through a fine Leon Mettam free-kick in just the fifth minute before being overwhelmed by City, with French attacker Tony Andreu scoring two of the goals.
Report: King's Lynn Town 1 Norwich City Under-23s 4 – Tony Andreu at the double for young Canaries
'The gulf in class was there for everyone to see but we knew it would be hard, that's why we took the game, it's all about fitness, we've been back a week,' Culverhouse said.
'Parts of it were good, we've just got to get better on the ball but we will do. It was a good fitness exercise, that was the idea of playing two teams just to get 45 minutes each because I think the build-up and playing against the quality we were would have been too much.'
Mettam scored seven in 17 games before being allowed to join Spalding on loan for the remainder of last season in January, after an apparent fall-out with former boss Gary Setchell, scoring nine goals for the Northern League First Division South side.
The former Corby and Worksop striker is back in the fold under Culverhouse though.
Story of the match: King's Lynn Town 1 Norwich City U23s 4
'He's scored a great goal, Metts, he came back and worked really hard and that was good,' the Linnets boss continued. 'So there were good bits in it, the goals we gave away were quite poor but you're playing against quality and if you give quality chances then you're picking the ball out of the back of your net.
He added: 'Metts has integrated with the group really well again, he's a good character to have because he's a voice in the changing room, he's vastly experienced and that's what we need.
'You saw Ryan Jarvis in the second half, he wants to look after the ball and uses his body well and the young boys that we have got here need to learn that, how to use the body to be stronger.
'So by having these experienced players and having the kids with us, they can learn.'
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