CHRIS LAKEY Points rather than performance will be the order of the day when City wave goodbye to a disappointing year with a home match against QPR on Saturday.

CHRIS LAKEY

Points rather than performance will be the order of the day when City wave goodbye to a disappointing year with a home match against QPR on Saturday.

“I know it is important to put a performance on, but it is also really important that we win the game,” said Canaries winger Lee Croft.

“It is no good going on for the rest of the season drawing every game, we need to start winning if we are going to be where we want to be and that will start here against QPR.”

Croft cut a dejected figure after the Boxing Day draw against bottom side Southend, when the team were booed off Carrow Road by angry fans.

But the 21-year-old said the players shared the fans' frustration at a run which has seen only two points from the last 15 added to City's tally.

“It is the same with the players,” said Croft. “The fans pay good money to come and see us, they want to be at the top of the league and it is the same with the players. We come here and we want to perform and we want to be up there as well and it must be so frustrating looking at the team sheet and looking at the players we have out there and seeing us performing like that.

“I can say to them it is not just them, it is the players as well. If you go into the changing room it is the manager and the coaching staff and the players - we are all exactly the same, if not worse. It is not through a lack of trying - we are doing everything to put it right.

“There are no excuses - it is up to us to put that right and we will be doing our utmost to do it against QPR.”

Croft admitted there was tension on the terraces and on the pitch.

“Maybe you can sense a bit of tension, maybe a bit of nervousness because we haven't got that win which we so badly want,” he said.

“I think the players get a bit frustrated. We have not won for a few games now and I think maybe it is creeping into a few people. We have got to stick together and we have to make sure we get the results.

“We came away from Wolves on Saturday disappointed as well and it's not as if we lost. Some people might say it was a good point at Wolves, but the fact is we should have won the game. It is the same against Southend - we have not lost but it is a game we should be winning and that's the frustrating thing because we have got to win. We don't feel it is good enough because of the standards we set ourselves.

“We should have won the game - I think we started well but really died down. We didn't take our chances and I think if we had taken them the outcome might have been different. But we didn't and the game became a stalemate where we looked like we were never going to score.

“I think it was the same at Wolves - we started really brightly there, creating chances, but I don't know why we start like that and then don't continue it. We seem to take out foot off the pedal a little bit and everyone got narked, in a way, with each other and that doesn't help either.

“I think we just need to win. As soon as we get a win I think we will be alright, but it is just getting that first win in a while and then taking off from there really.”