Norwich head coach Johannes Hoff Thorup revealed his captain Shane Duffy had been dropped for disciplinary reasons after watching his side held to a 1-1 Championship draw with Oxford at Carrow Road.
The Republic of Ireland defender, who had been an ever present in the English second tier this season, was dropped to the bench after turning up late for a pre-match meeting earlier in the day.
“Shane was late – and the culture of this football club is clear. There are some simple rules and if a player makes a mistake there will be consequences,” said Thorup.
“He didn’t do it on purpose and without going into too much detail, he was a bit unlucky with what happened. But it was an easy decision for me to make. These sort of things can happen, but they should not happen.”
As for the game, he added: “I am annoyed and disappointed that a performance like that didn’t give us three points.
“In games like that, nine times out of 10 you will win it. I was pleased with a lot of what we did but the end product was not good enough.”
Norwich took the lead after just five minutes as they sliced through the Oxford defence with some slick football down the right.
Callum Doyle produced a peach of a pass to pick out the overlapping Kellen Fisher and the youngster’s low cross was judged perfectly for Josh Sargent to apply the finishing touch from close range for his 12th goal of the season.
Oxford levelled after 18 minutes when a Will Vaulks long throw took a couple of deflections before falling for Mark Harris, who coolly converted from close range.
From then on it was all Norwich, but the visitors defended stoutly to come away with a hard-earned draw that lifted them eight points clear of the relegation zone.
Oxford boss Gary Rowett was pleased with the point, even though it extended his side’s winless run to eight matches.
“I thought the lads showed real character tonight,” he said. “After conceding a goal so early, it would have been easy for the heads to drop and concede two or three more.
“This is a difficult place to come to and they have a lot of good players but we worked really hard to nullify them.
“I think we deserved a point for the effort we put in and to be fair, although they had a lot of the ball, they didn’t have too many clear-cut chances.
“It’s tough for a club coming up from League One and it’s easy to go on a run of defeats. If a team like Middlesbrough can go on a run of five-successive defeats, it can happen to us too.
“To get a draw like this gives us an extra lift and hopefully can help us in our aim of moving up the table.”
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