Philippe Clement saluted the never-say-die attitude of his Norwich players after a 3-1 comeback win at Charlton.
The Canaries, on a run of six straight defeats in league and cup heading to The Valley, fell behind to a Charlie Kelman goal.
But Clement was impressed with his side’s determination as Paris Maghoma equalised and Mathias Kvistgaarden fired them ahead, before Ivan Mesik’s own goal completed the turnaround.
Asked afterwards how confident he had been that Norwich would turn around their recent slump, Clement replied: “I was 1,000 per cent sure, if that is possible.
“I really believe in the quality of this group. We could have had many more points than we have today and I’m fully confident in this group of players. They still need to learn a lot but that’s normal with the ages we have.
“We went behind and the positive is that this group, I’ve been saying it for weeks, has a lot of desire to get results. They stay resilient and keep going. There has not been a game where they have given up or are not running. Those are the basics in the team – they are doing that.
“We took domination of the game. We scored three good goals and it could’ve been more. The defensive part was there, combined with the offensive part, for 70 minutes. The target for the next game is to do it for 90 minutes.
“We had difficulty with Charlton’s shape for 15 or 20 minutes but, after that, we started to play our football.”
Charlton boss Nathan Jones described his side’s lack of defensive stability as a “recipe for disaster”.
The Addicks have not won since the end of August and were booed off at full-time after a ninth Championship game without a victory.
“We have to find a way to be more difficult to play against,” said Jones. “Right now we are too easy and we concede goals too easily. That is a recipe for disaster in football.
“We started really well in the opening 20 minutes and had two or three chances. We took the lead and were playing exactly as I wanted us to play. With a little more guile we could have gone further ahead but we didn’t punish them.
“When they had opportunities, a lot were gifted, we didn’t do the basics well enough to stop that.
“It is just decision making. It is a poor pass that gifted them the ball to score but we don’t handle the counter-attack well. Nobody closes down.
“The second goal is alarming because no-one goes to the ball, we allow him (Ruairi McConville) to deliver a flighty ball and we’re all over the place as a back four.
“These things are costing us. A year ago we would have seen that game out.”
