Johannes Hoff Thorup: Norwich City boss believes play-offs still in reach

Norwich were beaten by Sheffield Wednesday and Bristol City immediately before the international break, having previously drawn with Blackburn and Oxford United.

Following the West Brom game, they face Plymouth (a), Sunderland (h), Burnley (a), Portsmouth (h), Millwall (a), Middlesbrough (a) and Cardiff (h).

Four of those teams are above them in the table, with Sunderland and Burnley currently fourth and third – and the latter still pushing for automatic promotion.

“That’s the best way, to have a schedule where we can really affect it now,” said Thorup.

“We can really affect it by making sure we perform at a good level and making sure we get the results we want.

“We have had a couple of home games where we haven’t been at our best – or when we have it’s only been for half of it, or at least not the whole game – so we owe the fans a good experience.”

Thorup travelled to the United States during the international break to spend time with majority shareholder Mark Attanasio.

He added: “We discussed everything from strategy to player development, from how we do things now to how we should do them in the future, and (it was useful) also just to get some inspiration from each other and get a feeling of where we are as a team.

“We refer to a team – the USA team and the British team over here – because we do things together. It was a good way of just aligning everything.

“What I’m happy about with Mark, and also his son Mike, is just their understanding of what it takes to develop something. They have huge experience of doing that with the baseball franchise [the Milwaukee Brewers] they own, and have built a baseball club that is up there competing with the best.”