Mark Hughes felt Stoke City put in their first mediocre performance of the 2013/14 Premier League season on Sunday.
The Potters were beaten 1-0 at home by Norwich City and the Welsh manager suggested his group of players did not really deserve anything from the contest.
"Not a great deal in all honesty. Too many players were below-par today," he told Sky Sports.
"It's a Premier League game, so you need as many players playing at the top level of their game as you can. Unfortunately we had too many not quite at the races and as a consequence it was quite an easy result for Norwich to obtain to be perfectly honest.
"In fairness to them since I walked through the door the group I have worked with have been excellent and it was only today that they let themselves down.
"So we will pick ourselves up, it's a disappointing result and a poor, poor result and I know we are better than we showed today.
"On another day I am sure we will be much better but today for whatever reason we weren't quite at it.
"We never got any pace or power into our game which is unlike us."
Jonny Howson scored the only goal of the match in the 34th minute whilst Stoke could have been unlucky not to be awarded a penalty when Kenywyne Jones was brought down in the area by Leroy Fer in the second half.
