Max Aarons believes Norwich City must prove that their team spirit can survive the tough times in the Premier League, after a fifth defeat in six games.

The youngster was part of the Canaries team beaten 2-0 at Brighton on Saturday, as last season's Championship champions continued to find their adjustment to top-flight standards difficult.

"You can't just have team spirit when things are going well. If you're in a tough period that's when you really see if you've got team spirit," said Aarons after the defeat.

"So now we need to utilise that, we've got a massive game against Watford (on Friday) and, it's a cliché, but we've got to put this game behind us and move on."

There were some heated words among the City players during and after the defeat on at a rain-lashed Amex Stadium on the south coast, with the hosts fully deserving of their 2-0 win.

The 19-year-old continued: "We all want each other to do the best we can and if someone slips out of that then we let them know, so I think if something's not going right we'll tell each other.

"We're open minded enough and resilient enough to deal with that, so I think that's a good thing, if it's done in the right way."

Marco Stiepermann had hit the crossbar in the first half but it was Norwich who had the far busier defence overall, leaving Daniel Farke's team second from bottom in the Premier League table.

Aarons admitted it felt like a costly defeat, against one of the teams expected to also be fighting for survival this season, with substitute Leandro Trossard scoring in the 68th minute and setting up Shane Duffy for the second goal in the 84th minute.

"We came here and, we always want to win away, but we knew this was a big game because they're a team that are going to be around us in the league this year, so we wanted to take points," he added.

"In the first half we were solid and we were solid until the first goal went in, which was the disappointing thing today. We worked so hard to be in the game and we created a few chances early on, Stiepi hit the crossbar, we thought that we could kick on in the second half, and once the first goal went in that was a real disappointment."