'We must learn from defeat'

Graham Potter reckons Swansea City must learn from the pain of the heaviest defeat of his reign after Norwich City ran out 4-1 winners at the Liberty.

The Swans’ usual defensive solidity deserted them as they took on the Championship leaders.

They were duly punished by three Norwich goals inside 21 first-half minutes.

Mike van der Hoorn’s own goal got the ball rolling for the Canaries, with Emiliano Buendia and Marco Stiepermann pouncing to make it 3-0 after just 37 minutes.

Daniel James pulled one back for the home side before the break, but any hopes of a revival were snuffed out when Teemu Pukki claimed Norwich’s fourth of the afternoon on the hour mark.

And Swans boss Potter believes his players must use this setback to push them forward in the long term.

“The scoreline makes it an uncomfortable afternoon for us,” he said.

“We started well. We controlled the game for the first 15 minutes or so, then we made a little mistake for the first goal.

“Then we have to manage that disappointment better than we did – we have to stay in the game.

“But we gave a cheap second goal away and then the environment is difficult for us.

“Norwich deserved to win over the course of the game. They attacked well and defended well.

“But we contributed more than we would have liked to their performance.

“Norwich are ahead of us in their development. Our challenge is to get to their level.”

Potter reckoned Norwich deserved credit for the way in which they pressed the Swans into errors.

But he added: “We can probably do better for the goals – we could understand the situation a bit better.

“But we are learning. We are trying to go forward as a team and there will be times when we make mistakes.

“Today we played against a team have scored four goals in each of their last three games.

“When you give a team like that confidence they are dangerous, and Norwich were impressive today.

“I don’t think it was a lack of effort or application that cost us.

“But to improve you have to have a little bit of suffering along the way.

“It’s now a question of how we respond as a team and there’s no time to feel sorry for ourselves.

“We have another tough game (against West Brom) on Wednesday. We have to analyse what we could have done better in this game and then try to put that into practice on Wednesday.”