'Time to come to the party' - Toothless City need to up the ante for Smith

Dean Smith urged Norwich City’s attackers it is time to ‘come to the party’ after missed chances proved costly in a 3-0 Premier League defeat at Tottenham on Sunday. 

Teemu Pukki has scored five of the Canaries' eight top flight goals so far, but the Finn spurned a big early chance, along with Adam Idah and Josh Sargent after the break.

Lucas, Davinson Sanchez and Son Heung-Min made no mistake to keep City rooted to the bottom. 

Smith insists his job is to find the answers from within the current Norwich squad, rather than rely on solving the issue in the January transfer window. 

“We have another five or six games before the window opens, and we have to improve the players here,” he said. “Our job, myself and the coaching staff, to make sure these players, who have got potential, make sure they start to fulfil it.

"The likes of Adam, Josh and some of the younger lads we have signed will have to start coming to the party. I have said before we can’t be too over-reliant on Teemu. He can score at this level, but we need others to chip in. 

“I’m sure a lot of people looking at this game would have expected the result but anyone who was at the game, or who watched it, can see we were in it all the time. We got in 1-0 down at half-time when I thought we were actually the better team.

"We created the better chances. Teemu had a couple of really good moments.  

“I was annoyed at the second goal we conceded. I feel we have to defend set pieces better. We let (Ben) Davies got a free run, and I know there was a little bit of fortune in how it dropped thereafter, but they were more clinical than we were.” 

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Smith included both Idah and Andrew Omobamidele in a new look formation. 

“I felt if you go gung ho with a Spurs team who field Harry Kane, Lucas Moura and Son you can get yourself very open and get undone very quickly,” he said. “Lucas and Son have unbelievable pace and trickery and Kane, we know, can create and score at will at times.

"I felt three centre backs would nullify them a bit and it did, but on the other side of it I wanted to play with two up top to give them some problems and I felt we did that. 

“Sometimes you just have to nod your head to the quality. A good player scored a really good goal to put them in front. I’m a little bit frustrated we didn’t get to him before the strike but good players can do that. Sometimes that happen but we never let our heads go.

"We stuck to the gameplan. I thought we adapted to it really well because it was a different system.”