The chastening experience of two years ago must be used if Norwich City are to stand up to Burnley's physicality this weekend.

Tim Krul was among the Canaries players who featured in the 2-0 defeat at Turf Moor in September 2019, being brought back down to earth with a bump after the epic 3-2 win over reigning champions Manchester City the previous weekend.

Towering striker Chris Wood headed in from a corner and turned in at the near post after poor defending inside the first 15 minutes, as the Clarets won comfortably despite having just 41pc of possession.

On this occasion, both teams are desperate for their first win of the season tomorrow, with City looking to avoid equalling a Premier League record for seven successive defeats at the start of a season.

“We know from two years ago that we had just beaten Manchester City and went to Burnley thinking it’s going to be a nice possession-based match – and it wasn’t," Krul said.

“So we need to show that experience. It’s going to be rough and we know that, that we need to be physical and ready for the fight because they will chuck a lot of physicality forward.

“If we can show a lot of fight and play around that, I think there will be a lot of chances for us.”

The City number one made clear he remains convinced that Daniel Farke’s squad will prove the doubters wrong and kick-start their season as he spoke in interviews after last weekend’s 2-0 loss at Everton.

Krul is alongside established senior players including Grant Hanley, Kenny McLean and Teemu Pukki in having the experience of the Canaries’ miserable 2019-20 relegation to learn from and use as motivation.

The 33-year-old says leadership is shown within the white lines on a match day though, however good intentions are in the lead up to games.

“Showing it on the Saturday,” he said of the key to showing leadership during tough times. “Confidence is showing your own performance first.

“When you’re down there you just need to look after your own performance first and show your experience to the younger ones or the new boys who haven’t been there before.

“Leadership is showing day in, day out, that you are up for the fight. The 11 that play need to be up for hard, hard work and Burnley away is going to be a physical, horrible game, we all know that.

“We need to be ready for that challenge and I do think we are - but we have to prove that.”

City head to Burnley tomorrow looking to end a troubling streak of six successive defeats following promotion.

The added context of pre-season being disrupted by a Covid-19 outbreak and a very difficult opening four games had provided some leeway but a seventh loss would equal the Premier League record for bad starts to the season.

“It’s not like we just lay down and turn over to get beat,” Krul continued.

“I don’t think the last few weeks has been anything to do with tactics, it’s been individual mistakes and as a team that we’ve been too sloppy and given other teams an advantage.

“That’s been the big problem but we have the players and the experience that we didn’t have two years ago to turn it around.

“We’ll work harder, we’ll go into training and work our socks off to turn this around and get a result at Burnley, as that’s what we need to do .”

Farke has switched to a 3-5-2 formation for the last two games and there were signs of improvement at Everton last weekend, only for mistakes from Ozan Kabak and Kenny McLean to prove critical.

City’s boss has repeated his belief that the tactical shape hasn’t been the key issue to the recent struggles and Krul agrees.

“Our philosophy is what it is. I don’t think tactics have been the problem,” he added. “It’s been individual mistakes and we’ve had too many.

“We got out most of the time (passing out of defence), it hasn’t fallen for us and it’s difficult to stand here and talk about positives when you’ve lost the game.”

The Toffees’ winner came eight minutes after the visitors reverted back to their recognised 4-2-3-1 shape, with Mathias Normann struggling from cramp and Ozan Kabak going close to a second yellow card.

Milot Rashica and Christos Tzolis were the attacking options introduced in the 69th minute but McLean’s slip was ruthlessly punished.

“We changed to a four when we were trying to force something and had the chance to make it 1-1 and it didn’t fall for us,” the former Newcastle number one said.

“We had a couple of good chances, Mathias had a good shot, Ben Gibson had a big chance with a header six yards from goal.

“But we need to take it on the chin, take the criticism and as a team stand up to be counted in the next few weeks.”

Results have inevitably led to plenty of doom and gloom among worried supporters but Krul insists there should be no doubt about how much effort is being put into turning things around.

“We’re all professionals and we all want to stay up in this league. We all knew it was going to be hard,” he added.

“We believe as a team that we are proving it every day in training but on the game day is when it counts and it is unforgiving in this league.

“I said it two years ago and we need to grow up as a team quickly and gel. There’s a lot of positives there but we need to just hold on to them.”

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