Norwich boss: We can beat drop

Norwich boss Nigel Worthington has warned the Barclays Premiership basement boys not to write off his team just yet.

The Canaries gave their survival hopes a massive shot in the arm yesterday with a shock 2-0 victory over Manchester United which left them just four points off Southampton in 17th place.

Worthington knows they still have a major fight on their hands if they are to avoid an immediate return to the Coca-Cola Championship, but he is determined to give it everything he has got.

“I think there are still four or five teams involved,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Sportsweek show. “It is very, very tight and it was nice, Iain Dowie came out in the week and said ‘Do not count Norwich City out just yet’, and I think he is spot on.

“There is a dog-fight there. We are all professionals, we are all ambitious and we want to do the best for our football clubs and for ourselves.”

Norwich’s defeat of United came courtesy of second-half goals from Dean Ashton and Leon McKenzie and, Worthington revealed, an order not to give Sir Alex Ferguson’s stars too much respect following last weekend’s 4-1 drubbing at Arsenal.

“I was not really surprised,” the manger said. “I had a little snipe at the players in the local press during the week because I felt against Arsenal last week we were a little bit star-struck, stood off, gave them too much respect, and if you do that to quality players in the Premiership, they are going to punish you, and we got punished at Arsenal.

“We had to get close to people, we had to get a foot in and what I basically said to them before the game was ‘You go and be the star of the show, do not let them take the limelight from us, you go and enjoy it’, and that is what they did.

“Where we have come from, the Championship, you can afford to maybe be a yard-and-a-half off people, two yards, and get away with it. In the Premiership, if you are half-a-yard, three-quarters of a yard off them, they are going to punish you, and Thierry Henry’s first two goals last week was exactly that.

“We thought we were doing a job, but we were not, so we had to learn from that and go out and do it slightly differently yesterday.

“But I have got to give credit to the players over the course of the season. I have got five or six games where we have under-performed or under-achieved, and after that, I think the players have given Norwich everything they have got.”