Norwich City sporting director Stuart Webber has defended the impact of his recruitment on the Canaries' squad make-up after a series of injuries harmed their play-off chase.

Experienced players Kieran Dowell, Ben Gibson, Grant Hanley and Kenny McLean all suffered season-ending injuries late in the campaign, leaving an inexperienced squad for head coach David Wagner.

Webber believes creating a squad that can survive such a crisis and remain strong is more difficult than it may seem, however.

"Tell any club in the world football to lose four senior players and expect to perform at the same level as when they had all four senior players," he said. "Look at Liverpool's form at the start of this year, when they had big players out and they're struggling.

"(Reds manager) Jurgen Klopp was saying in every press conference, 'what do you expect, we've got four of best players missing'. It becomes harder.

"[People] think it's like playing football manager. Everyone expects us to have four top senior centre backs, four top senior wingers, four top centre-midfield players.

"You're living on a computer game. You're 21 years old living in some fantasy that that's what it's like when you're running an organisation and a business like this.

"Guess what? These players cost a lot of money. And you can't go, 'we'll have the fourth most experienced centre half on 1000 quid a week'. Do you know we get for 1000 quid a week? Probably a King's Lynn player, all due respect to King's Lynn players.

"So I think it's easy for people to overlook that. I'm never going to change their mind today, so why am I even going to try?"

Webber was keen to highlight that all sides would have struggled with the fitness issues City faced, even the world's best. "Take Manchester City," he continued. "They've got the Champions League final coming up, but take out (Erling) Haaland, (Kevin) De Bruyne, John Stones. I tell you what, Inter Milan go 'yeah I fancy this', because that is a drop off. 

"That's that. And that's at the world-class level. So I think anyone who can't see that, they're either trying to get on side with a popularity contest, using it's just an easy stick to beat us with, or quite frankly are a completely uneducated fool."