Daniel Farke proud of Norwich mentality as Canaries stretch Championship lead

Posted Thursday, February 18, 2021 by PA

Norwich boss Daniel Farke hailed his table-topping side after beating Coventry 2-0 at St Andrew’s.

Teemu Pukki and Emi Buendia combined twice for a goal each as the points were wrapped up by half-time.

Farke’s charges opened up a healthy four-point cushion at the top after Brentford’s defeat to West London neighbours QPR.

“I’m really proud because it was a difficult away game for us,” admitted Farke.

“This league is relentless, especially when you face a side who has a decent home record and they desperately want to fight for points against relegation.

“I was especially pleased to return to the dressing room with a clean sheet after we have conceded in the last two games and we showed this mentality and steel and they had their spells too.

“We had two or three games where we were struggling to create chances to score goals, players suspended and an away game against Swansea, the best defensive team in the league.

“In this league you will always have some periods where you find it difficult to find the net and statistic wise we are one of the teams who create the most chances in the whole league.

“It was nearly a perfect first half, dominated the game, scored two fantastic goals and should have scored many more.

“I was quite pleased with our first half and the second half they tried everything to come back into this game and I was quite please we had this mentality to dig in.”

The off-colour Sky Blues are just three points above the dreaded drop zone back to League One football.

Mark Robins’ relegation-threatened side have worryingly won just one of their last seven games.

And he stressed they must stop shipping silly goals if they want to stay up.

He said: “We’re giving too many rubbish goals away.

“You’ve got to go after them and you can either buckle under the pressure and one or two are below par, sometimes that happens but we’ve got to go again.

“If you’re going to concede a goal, stay in the game and then in the second half you can have a really good go which is what we did, but to concede the second goal just gave the game away.

“There’s a game in a couple of days (against Brentford), on Sky that we want to compete for 90 minutes in properly.

“The first half was awful. In certain areas we looked like we were lacking confidence and then we’re making the wrong decisions when we had to come out and press and when we had to stay at home.

“Brentford have lost two on the bounce so they’re going to be coming here a wounded animal and we need to do the same.”