Norwich City winger Josh Murphy was left a frustrated man following the Canaries’ defensive errors as they slipped to a 4-2 defeat at Aston Villa.

Norwich Evening News: Josh Murphy scored one and created one but was on the losing side at Aston Villa. Picture: Paul Chesterton/Focus ImagesJosh Murphy scored one and created one but was on the losing side at Aston Villa. Picture: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images (Image: ©Focus Images Limitedwww.focus-images.co.uk+447814 482222)

Murphy’s second-half effort was one of the bright sparks from a difficult afternoon in Birmingham, as Conor Hourihane’s hat-trick helped seal the hosts win.

“It’s more frustrating than anything, to play in a game like that, because we started off all right with our ideas on the pitch – we just concede a sloppy goal and then another sloppy goal,” said Murphy.

“We get ourselves back into the game in the second half, and then all of a sudden we just concede another goal and give ourselves a mount to climb. That’s the most disheartening thing.

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“We then got back into the game again and then conceded again. So as soon as we started climbing, we just fell back down again and it was individual mistakes that cost us.

“We played some good football at times, but we were just too sloppy in certain areas.”

In reality City’s first-half efforts left them with too much to do after half-time – yet they still could have earned a point had some second-half incidents fallen the visitors’ way.

“That’s football for you,” Murphy added. “I sure Villa will be delighted with their win, but everyone is just gutted. The boys worked hard – it’s just the sloppy individual mistakes that have cost us and we’re going to have to rebuild and go again on Tuesday, and hopefully beat Charlton in the Carabao Cup.

“We’re working on defending every day and you can’t pinpoint that it was his fault and his fault, because at the end of the day it’s a collective thing and we need to help each other out. If someone makes a mistake, someone has got to be there to cover the individual.

“Everyone is to blame for the way the goals went in today. No one was perfect on the pitch and I’m sure we’ll go through the match, we’ll watch it back and it’s just about rectifying those little mistakes and tweaking our performance, and then we’re going to be fine.”

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