Clement explains approach to handling growing City pressure

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0 Comments This article is brought to you by our exclusive subscriber partnership with our sister title USA Today, and has been written by our American colleagues. It does not necessarily reflect the view of The Herald. Philippe Clement is desperate to end Norwich City’s damaging run, but knows allowing that desire to become desperation will not help his players navigate their Championship storm.

Five straight defeats have intensified supporter frustration, with sporting director Ben Knapper bearing the brunt of the anger while Clement faces increasing scrutiny of his own.

The City boss believes his responsibility is to remain calm and balanced as he searches for a route out of their struggles, particularly with so many young players being exposed to sustained negativity.

"It's really hard to say to me more desire, because if I lose one game, then the desire is so big to win the next one," Clement said. "My job is to stabilise the team, to keep everything into balance. If my desire is so big that I start to shout at the players all the time, they will not become better. That will not help.

"The team needs to continue pushing and learning lessons out of the mistakes made in those moments to manage games in a better way. They're open for it, they're hungry for it.

"We need to be good on the ball, but in moments we need to dig in also and to be united and to be positive and to work hard."

Part of returning to winning ways will be to block out the external and increasing noise, something Clement has discussed with his City group.

"I spoke about that because outside noise is of no use for them now. This group is really young. They come out of a life where they were brought up with their phone, with social media.

City's fanbase are frustrated and angry by a run of eight defeats in 11 - but Clement insists the squad must ignore the noise. (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)

"That's their life every day. They got a lot of praise before and almost no difficult moments. For a few new ones, it's the first time," he said.

"They need to learn to focus on what they are doing here and not to listen to all the noise and people who are speaking negatively about them or putting them down. That doesn't help for this moment.

"They need to be focused on the football, on what they need to do on the pitch and to have the determination in themselves and their team-mates to start winning games again. They can do it. They have the talent to do it."