Neil: Norwich should have progressed

After Norwich’s disappointing penalty defeat to Everton last night, Manager Alex Neil felt that his side deserved to progress in the Capital One Cup.

Fielding a team with seven changes from the side who faced West Brom at the weekend, Neil’s team dominated most of the proceedings but failed to beat Everton ‘Keeper Joel Robles, who kept his side in the game. Robles turned out to be the Hero for Everton, saving Wes Hoolahan’s penalty before Nathan Redmond fired wide, giving the Toffees the win.

Speaking after the match to Sky Sports, Neil admitted that he felt that the game’s result didn’t reflect the performance of his side.

I thought we played really well. If anybody deserved to win the match over the 90 or 120 minutes I thought it was us

We were unfortunate it went to a penalty shoot-out and the fact we went out of the Cup having played really well tonight is disappointing.

We’ve been doing a lot of work and we made some slight tweaks to the shape tonight. I thought it worked, the boys did extremely well.

They worked really hard and deserved to go through to be honest but I’m really encouraged in terms of the performance and how they applied themselves.

Neil gave a number of fringe players a chance in the team, ahead of Norwich’s tough trip to Manchester City at the weekend. Neil admitted he was pleased with the contribution from a number of these players, and now has a lot of thinking to do before the weekend.

I thought all the boys that came in showed up well tonight, that makes it difficult going forward

Obviously Saturday is going to be a different kettle of fish playing away to Man City and to be fair they’ve done a lot of work tonight so we’ve got to make sure we balance things out come the weekend.