Alex Neil hints long-serving players could leave Norwich

Alex Neil has hinted Norwich could part ways with some of their long-serving players in the close season.

Sunderland's midweek win over Everton condemned City to an immediate return to the Championship, and Neil will sit down with the club's owners after the weekend to put together a plan for the summer.

The Norwich squad contains a number of players - Russell Martin, Ryan Bennett and Wes Hoolahan among them - whose arrival at the club predates Neil's by several years.

The manager said: "There will have to come a certain amount of freshness. A lot of players have been here for a number of years and that carries its own problems at times.

"We've got the basis of a really good squad. Looking at the squad we've got, how we would've hoped to have performed, I don't think we hit those heights and ultimately that's where we've got to."

Neil will not spare himself in the relegation post mortem, and he said: "Every year's a massive learning curve. Since I've started management, every single year I'd like to think I've improved.

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"Every year there's certain things you come across for the first time that you have to deal with.

"The only right thing to do as a manager, whether you're successful or not, is look back on it, reflect, and take the bits you feel are important and see how you dealt with them. And then think how you would deal with them again."