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Steve Bruce reckons his Aston Villa players let themselves and the supporters down in the battering at Carrow Road.

Any faint hopes of automatic promotion were extinguished with this 3-1 defeat and Bruce was quick to slam his under-performing stars.

“We didn’t do enough,” he said.

“Supporters get up at five or six o’clock to support their team.

“The supporters have been brilliant, they have sold out everywhere they go.

“You always feel you have let them down.

“But I think the players have let themselves down and the team.”

Villa have taken just four points from their last five games and were only given a top-two lifeline by Cardiff’s failings in their last two games.

But the gap between Villa and both the Bluebirds and third-placed Fulham appears too much of an ask to close with just five games remaining.

“We’ve squandered a good opportunity and that’s when it becomes disappointing and frustrating,” said Bruce.

“It ain’t over, certainly not with five games left and six for others.

“But the last few games we have found ourselves wanting.”

Goals from Josh Murphy, Dennis Srbeny and James Maddison inflicted a third defeat in five games on Villa, who had brief ray of light when Jack Grealish pulled one back at 2-1.

But in truth the scoreline could have been even greater in favour of the hosts with Norwich boss Daniel Farke admitting: “We could have scored five or six’.

A frustrated Bruce added: “It was poor, really poor.

“My reaction, as it always is when we play like that, is disappointment.

“I didn’t think we did enough from the first whistle to the last and got what we deserved.

“The disappointing thing is we gave ourselves a wonderful chance through performances during the season and the last three of four games we have been found wanting.

“What that is down to, I don’t know.

“That’s the most disappointing thing.

“I didn’t think there was any zip to us at all from the first whistle.

“I thought Norwich were the same in the first-half.

“I thought they were just as lacklustre. The kid scores a great goal.

“The second and the third goal are then so unlike us. In the end we got what we deserved, which was absolutely nothing.”