Norwich City 0-1 Bristol City: Manning Championship reaction

Manning and his players were booed off for the third consecutive home game after Mark Sykes' 73rd minute strike inflicted a loss against the club he led to the Championship play-offs last season.

The City head coach dug out his under-performing players in his post-match media, and responded to the fresh fan criticism directed at him and towards sporting director, Ben Knapper.

"Unfortunately, I feel like I'm going to be repeating myself. I think it's too nice. The whole place, everything's just too nice. We have to change that and create that edge, and we need people to step up and own it and take responsibility for it. We played some nice stuff, but with nothing at the end of it, no conviction.

"We had two good chances we don't take. We put it straight at the keeper or we have moments where we miss a past to Sarge (Josh Sargent), another one second half when we get in half-decent areas and get good control and then there's a lack of quality at the end of it.

"For me, those are the bits that if you want to be successful and you want to win games at this level, we have to be ruthless. We can have all the plans, we can do all the work, we can talk tactics and structures, but the second the game starts you've got to have people that are really hungry to go and win a game of football.

"At the minute in a tough atmosphere it's quite easy to go hiding and go under. I thought too many people did that today.

"(What about the goal you conceded?) Soft. Like most goals, we concede. That's probably the frustrating thing. I've said about being nice. It's tough to concentrate for 100 minutes at this level. The intensity of the games, the physicality, the level of focus that you need to not give up chances. And if you look at the goal, a soft free kick, switch off and it is in the back of our net.

"That is kind of the story where we're at the minute. We've said it too many times in too many games. We've given away cheap goals."

Manning spoke to the media on Saturday afternoon at Carrow Road.

Click here to read article