Swansea wide player Nathan Dyer felt he was on the end of some rough treatment from the Canaries in Norwich City's Premier League win at the Liberty Stadium.

Dyer has called for more protection for the Swans' attacking threats after what he labelled were 'a few too many kicks' following City's 3-2 weekend victory. The 24-year-old was replaced by ex-Norwich loanee Leroy Lita for the final quarter of an hour, having played a key role in Swansea's opening goal of a pulsating contest.

'I don't want to comment on the refs, but I felt on Saturday we maybe didn't get as much protection as we would have liked. There were a few too many kicks,' he said. 'We're not the type of team to be crowding the referee so maybe we're a bit na�ve in not protesting to the referee as much as we should. That's our nature, we just want to get on with the game, we don't want to be howling at the referee and getting in his face. Maybe we do need to say a few more things to the ref. You have referees, assistants and fourth officials and you hope they'll do their jobs.'

Dyer had few complaints with Norwich's storming fightback after the interval which inflicted only a second home league defeat of the season on Brendan Rodgers' side following Manchester United's November victory.

'It's disappointing, we knew it was going to be a hard game, but we were just second to every ball really,' he said. 'That's the way football goes sometimes. We just weren't at the races. Everybody knows the way we play, it's not new. I think we just didn't play as well as we could have. It was a second-rate performance from us. I'm sure we'll come back from our break and be firing on all cylinders again.

'The fans will say we should have got the points, but Norwich are doing better than we are in this league. It was a battle between two newly-promoted teams who were showing everyone they can handle the big league. The way we've been playing, everyone is expecting us to win. The fans think we should be winning, but it doesn't work like that in football.'

Dyer and the rest of Swansea's first team squad have now flown out to Tenerife for a mid-season break ahead of the final Premier League run-in and a trip to Stoke on February 25.

'We weren't that tired, we just didn't play as well as we could have on Saturday,' he told the South Wales Evening Post. 'Hopefully we'll come back from our break and be good to go again. We're playing above all expectations at the moment. We're pleased with what we're doing so we can't be too downhearted. Every team loses. It's only the second match we've lost at home, we've made the Liberty a fortress so I'm not going to take anything away from the players. We've just got to make sure we do better next time.'