Stoke boss Steven Schumacher felt the Potters rolled over too easily against a ruthless Norwich City in a 3-0 Championship defeat.

Schumacher plotted an embarrassing 6-2 rout of the Canaries earlier this season as Plymouth chief, but his latest club were brushed aside on Saturday – much to the delight of the travelling support who taunted him as he headed for the tunnel at full-time.

The Liverpudlian warned his Stoke side must now show more courage on the run-in, with only a two point gap to the relegation places.

“We speak about it all the time. It’s something we’re aware about. We say all the time that you’ve got to show courage, you’ve got to be brave and someone has to stand up and be a leader in those moments,” he said. “Setbacks happen in football, you can’t have it your own way all the time.

“We nearly scored the first goal and we were doing okay up until the first goal but all of a sudden it gets away from us and it’s happened too often. I keep saying all the time, ‘Show bravery, take the ball, make angles for each other, be positive.’

"So what if you make a mistake? It’s worse if you don’t show, and someone just has to boot the ball up the pitch. That does my head in, I can’t get my head around it.”

Stoke keeper Daniel Iversen denied Borja Sainz and Josh Sargent with fine reaction stops, and Schumacher admitted Norwich could easily have piled on more goals.

“Possibly yes. They probably had a few other chances. We lost the game because they were better than us and we weren’t good enough in too many areas of the game,” he said. “I felt we were a little bit too passive. It took us 78 minutes to make a tackle and that’s not going to get you any results against a team as good as Norwich.

"We weren’t close enough, we weren’t aggressive enough and when we did have the ball we gave it away too cheaply as well.

“We came up against a better team, who were stronger than us, more physical and you could tell they’re in the top six and we’re in a relegation fight. You could definitely see the gulf in the two teams.

“I wouldn’t be saying anything different if we’d won, I’d still be saying eight big games to go. We have to just keep going, plugging away.”