Norwich City: Johannes Hoff Thorup on George Long criticism

The Dane revealed at Colney on Thursday the experienced back up keeper had held his hand up for a costly error in Sheffield Wednesday’s second goal of a 2-0 midweek Championship defeat.

Long has been criticised in some quarters for previous goals shipped against Stoke, Preston and Middlesbrough in an extended spell replacing injured first choice Angus Gunn.

Thorup gets the focus on Long from outside the camp, but is not interested in any blame game ahead of his injury-hit squad’s Carrow Road test this weekend against Bristol City.

“Yes, I can understand it, because it's obvious, and I think George, fair play to him, he also raised his arm and said, ‘Yes, it's my mistake,’ which I think is exactly the kind of environment that we try to build here,” said the City boss. “One where we can be open and honest to each other, and we can say, ‘Yes, this is my mistake. Yes, I should have done better’.

"But there's many things, also, from a coaching perspective, that can be done better in a situation like that.

“It's never important for me to go down to individuals and say, it's only because of this, or it's only because of that. It's a collective approach, and that's in everything we do here.

"I fully understand why some can be frustrated. I fully understand that when you travel so many hours to Sheffield on a Tuesday night, and you see the team perform like that, they are not fully satisfied. That's completely understandable from my side.

"But we work in a little bit different way than that, where the emotions cannot take over, and the emotions cannot be a part of the way that we prepare, or the way that we analyse, or the way that we give feedback to each other.”

Defeats on the road to Cardiff and the Owls have led to some honest talking behind-closed-doors.

“What I tried to also highlight for the players again this morning is that on every goal it's so easy to highlight that single mistake that's obvious for everyone,” said Thorup. “But leading to that, there's four, five, six mistakes where we can deal with it better.

"We can solve the situation better. That's the approach we take, and also the approach when I talk to you guys. You'll never hear me blaming one player. You never hear me blame a striker for not scoring on a penalty, or goalkeeper for missing a save, because that's a part of football.

“But the way that we approach it is that we need to see from a collective point of view, what can we actually do better? And there's many situations, both on the first goal (on Tuesday), where we have to do better before the ball is in our box, and there's many situations with the free kick they scored from, where we simply have to do better before we commit a foul and before we have to defend that that situation.”

Thorup is not worried a pattern is developing in the manner City have left men unmarked to score on diagonal free kicks in their box against Middlesbrough and now at Hillsborough.

“No, not really, because I actually think it's been a part of the game where we have been really, really strong so far this season,” he said. “I think we had conceded one goal from a set piece, a corner at Derby, and that's quite solid.

"Then, of course, we saw in the Middlesbrough game the goal they scored, which was not ideal for us to have the player on the back post in so much space, and it was a little bit the case again in Sheffield, even though I think there was a couple of players involved in the situation that could have done better.”