Alex Neil admitted Norwich City let struggling Bristol City off the hook in Tuesday's 1-1 Championship stalemate at Ashton Gate.

The Canaries missed a number of excellent chances before the interval to add to Yanic Wildschut's first goal for the club. City paid for that profligacy when Bailey Wright punished fresh slackness at a defensive set piece to deny Neil's men a first win in five.

'Certainly away from home there is no doubt we have a lack of confidence. When teams bang it from back to front we seem to struggle with it. Simple as that,' said Neil. 'I felt we should have had the game done by half-time. Steven Naismith should score when he has a one-on-on. Yanic had a good chance at the back post. We got ourselves into really good areas at times and maybe the final pass or decision was lacking. We should have put the game to bed.

'I think it would have been finished if it had gone 2-0. When you are struggling like they are it is difficult to turn that around. We didn't get the goal and it proved a different second-half. We dealt with that direct threat in the first-half but they changed the system about three times.

'They threw a lad on who is about 6ft 6in and went two up top and were feeding off scraps. We had three or four opportunities on the counter and if we find a good pass we are in. The goal we do concede is not even a header, the lad puts it in waist-high from the corner. We dropped deeper and deeper. We need to be braver but we lost a couple of headers. We worried a bit, tried to drop in and cover and that gives the other team a boost. Perhaps our front three's work ethic wasn't as good as it could be.'

Neil made four changes from the weekend's 5-1 mauling at Sheffield Wednesday, with Michael McGovern producing a string of key stops.

'Michael made three or four very good saves. I thought it was a good performance for him,' said Neil. 'I could have made more but having watched Bristol I knew they were going to be direct, they were going to be in your face and really make it a physical game. With the lads I have available those were the best three in the middle of the park and I put pace in the wide areas to try and hurt them which worked in the first-half.

'I had to sacrifice Josh at the end for Seb (Bassong) because we needed our best headers and there was number of balls going into the box. If it was a football game when it was technical I would have brought someone like Alex Pritchard on. We didn't have ball and we needed to clear our lines. Seb made some crucial headers.'