City’s EDS suffered a second consecutive defeat in the Premier League 2, after two goals from Tony Springett and Joe Duffy, as well as goals from Ken Aboh and Prezemyslaw Placheta secured a 6-0 win for the young Canaries.
The EDS boss highlighted Norwich’s experience they had out on the pitch and stressed that his young, make-shift team can take experience from the match despite defeat.
“Today was a very difficult game based on the level of challenge for our own players and based on who we were playing against,” Barry-Murphy began.
“The level of Norwich’s experience made it a high level challenge for our players and they applied themselves very well.
“It was a team that was put together very quickly, with a very important game on Tuesday in UEFA Youth Cup to come, which all the players that are available will play in.”
Our young outfit battled well in the first half against Norwich, but the game turned on it’s head when Kian Noble was sent off just before half-time after handling the ball in the area and conceding a penalty.
“The challenge was increased by Kian [Noble’s] sending off close to half time because I thought up to that point we competed really well and caused them a lot of problems with our build up which I thought was exceptional.
“The second half becomes really difficult because it’s 10 v 11 but I thought our players kept going right till the end and I was very happy with a lot of it.”
Norwich played former Scottish international, Grant Hanley, and experienced Adam Forshaw, and Barry-Murphy believes his younger players can take experience from that challenge.
“I think for the younger players, who would probably never expect to play at this level of competition this season, it will have been great experience for them as long as they understand what they are taking from it and I’m sure they will.
“But also for the more established players, they’re not used to losing games by this scoreline so there’s also valuable lessons in that in terms of how much you can help the younger players to keep going right to the end despite the scoreline, but that isn’t easy in the game and I thought they did that well.”
