Wayne Rooney felt Plymouth rolled over too easily as the Pilgrims’ travel sickness continued in a 6-1 Championship rout at Norwich City.
Argyle have yet to win in nine league attempts on the road this season, and had previously been hammered at Sheffield Wednesday and Cardiff.
But the Canaries dismantled Rooney’s side on Tuesday, with Borja Sainz’s hat-trick and goals from Shane Duffy, Anis Ben Slimane and Ante Crnac inflciting their heaviest defeat of the season.
“We were nowhere near good enough,” said the legendary former England and Manchester United striker. “We gave the ball away too easily, we weren’t aggressive enough, we didn’t win our duels or make tackles. It was too easy for Norwich to create chances against us. That was a theme throughout the whole game, to be honest.
"We're very fortunate to go in at 2-1, and then you hope you get a reaction coming out to the second half. Once they scored the third goal, I think we went under a little bit. I could probably put the Under-18 team out there tonight, and he wouldn’t concede six goals. I'm very disappointed.
"I'm going to be frustrated an the next 24/48 hours are not going to be nice for the players, but I think we need to really get to the bottom of why this is happening.
“I don't question the players’ attitude at all. But what you need to understand and realise, as a player, is you have tough moments in games, and you have to dig in. You have to communicate. If one of your team mates is having a bad game, you have to help him out. That's football. That's how you progress as a team.
"When it went 3-1 I didn't feel we were ever going to get back in the game. It looked like the players felt that on the pitch, that they didn't believe they could get back in the game.
"I've praised players a lot this season, because a lot of the performances, most of my home games have been very good, but we need to really quickly figure out the away form, because it can't carry on this way.”
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