The Belgian labelled the second half display against the Blues as ‘maybe the best’ of his short tenure, but it followed a damaging opening 20 minutes he labelled ‘one of the worst’.
Carlos Vicente and Marvin Ducksch pounced, before Kenny McLean’s second half thunderbolt threatened a Carrow Road comeback.
“We cannot have this big difference in the performance,” said Clement, “The second half is maybe the best I have seen from the team until now. But the first 20 minutes was also one of the worst. For sure we have to take something from this game.
“Look back at the statistics. We had 62pc ball possession. We had almost double the amount of chances the opponent had. I don’t agree Birmingham took the game, we gave them the game.
“They didn’t have a lot of domination and pushing us back. We had two or three occasions where we were exposed with a long ball or a long cross. Something we didn’t have the last weeks and months. They were really efficient in those situations.
“On the ball, we were not precise enough or making the right choices. Then we had more balance in the final 20 minutes of the first half. Mo (Toure) had a big chance at the back post. But, second half, we totally dominated.”
Clement delivered some half-time home truths to spark a response.
“Sometimes I want to keep things between me and the team. It was about what I wanted to see, not only as players but as personalities,” he said. “I felt with this one goal you are totally back into the game, because in the final 15 minutes of the first half it felt like we were creating momentum.
“Plus we had proven in the past we can score two or three in five minutes. So they had to go full in. I missed that in the first half.
“I talked about that. We showed them some images where we missed things, with and without the ball. I have to say the team did it brilliantly in the second half.
“All we missed was to score more goals. Otherwise we would be sitting here really proud of how the team played; that we didn’t start well but the reaction was really good.”