Philippe Clement pleased after asking Norwich to ‘start as wrecking ball’ in win

Norwich boss Philippe Clement said he had wanted his team to make a fast start but even he did not expect goals so early in each half during their 3-0 win at Oxford.

Mohamed Toure hit a hat-trick on his full debut, including goals after just 51 seconds and then less than two minutes after the restart.

Clement said: “It was what we wanted to see from Mohamed – but also from everyone around him.

“We’ve seen the last two months that everyone who plays as a striker gets much better opportunities than three months ago.

“The strikers can be in good positions to finish off the job, and that’s what he did really well.

“What pleased me most was to keep a clean sheet – and to score three goals against Oxford, because they were very good defensively these last two months, and showed it against Coventry last weekend.

“We scored three good goals, it was confirmation that all the group is working hard, all the group is understanding more what is expected of them in different positions.

“I asked the team today to start as a wrecking ball – and they did, but I know also, from experience, that I will ask it again in the next few weeks and that doesn’t mean we’re going to score in the first minute!

“But it’s really important to have the mindset to do that and of course that changed the game.

“We can see all the players are understanding how I want them to play with the ball and without the ball and how they need to move with the ball. And because of that, we start to play better.

“But I told them after the game, I missed seeing a hunger for a fourth goal, or a fifth goal. We kept the ball well, on most occasions, but we were less dangerous. Those are more steps to take.”

Oxford have not scored in their last four home games and head coach Matt Bloomfield said afterwards: “It was really disappointing and we have to move on from it quickly, but we have to take the learnings from it.

“We learnt a huge amount.

“I got bits wrong tonight in our set-up and I take responsibility for that, and we’ll learn from that and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“Our game plan was to try to disrupt and to try to impose ourselves on the game, so it’s really hard when you go behind inside the first minute. And it was a fairly routine goal to give away.

“It was really disappointing and frustrating and took the sting out of us a little bit. It really affected us tonight.

“So apologies to our supporters, it wasn’t good enough from us. We have to be better.

“All three goals were utterly avoidable from our point of view. On Saturday we were so resilient in our shape and tonight it was almost the other side of us.

“The cheap giveaways gave us a mountain to climb and then obviously belief and confidence drains and it falls apart a little bit.

“The early goal and then the early goal in the second half makes it really hard to come back from that point.

“We are trying our best to create good scoring opportunities and we put a really attacking team out tonight, and unfortunately it didn’t play out that way.

“The early first goal really did affect us. But we have to keep fighting.”