Daniel Farke conceded he may have gone overboard in his bid to spark a reaction from Norwich City's squad after a wretched trip to QPR.
The Canaries' tame second half surrender on Easter Monday in a 4-1 defeat left a sour taste for the head coach, and the bare minimum required is a committed response against Aston Villa.
'I was pretty strict how I judged the game and our behaviour,' he said.
'I like to communicate with the guys and hear their opinions but sometimes it must be just a monologue.
'I was the same in the last few days, pretty honest and pretty strict.
'I got the feeling we were not there in the duels and for me that is so important and a basic thing you must bring on the pitch. I am not addicted to statistics but we won 36pc of our duels and only 26pc in the air.
'You can play football like Barcelona or Bayern Munich but you will not win points if you do not compete.
'We showed them a lot of clips, we spoke about it and we worked on the training pitch.
'After calming down in two or three days I got the feeling maybe I was a little bit too strict.
'But it was important to be honest.'
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City's early season humbling at Millwall acted as a watershed, but the Norwich head coach insisted what unfolded at Loftus Road was very different.
'It was not like Milwall, when we were 3-0 down after 30 minutes and tactically it was a disaster.
'That was not the case at QPR,' he said. 'The lads know we have to show a reaction.
'When I analysed what happened in recent weeks we had a really good game against Reading, we could easily have won 6-2 or 7-2.
'Then we played the best side in Fulham and, for me, another good performance.
'They were 17 unbeaten and with their best squad. We didn't have Grant Hanley, Marco Stiepermann, Onel Hernandez, Tom Trybull and for me we were still the better side. It was an unlucky loss.
'When I substituted Alex Tettey and Dennis Srbeny there was standing ovations for them.
'That is a sign of a good performance.
'Then after a tough game three days later we drive to QPR and deserve to be in the lead after 40 minutes and then were a bit lazy, a bit sloppy - perhaps lacking a bit of self-belief after recent weeks.
'Angus (Gunn) made a mistake at 1-1 and they are on the front foot. It was the type of result that can happen but for us an exception.'
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