CITY defender Jens Berthel Askou has been ever-present in the Canaries starting line-up in the league under Paul Lambert and has missed out on only three games so far this season - including Saturday's FA Cup defeat to Carlisle.

The Dane explained his disappointment at missing the match at Brunton Park, which was due to family illness: "They're still struggling, especially my wife, she's been in bed for five or six days in a row, so it's been tough."

Askou is hoping to be back in contention for tonight's trip to Essex to face Steve Tilson's Southend United (7.45pm): "Hopefully we can get some help to take care of her and the kids at home. I'll do everything I can to be able to play as I was unhappy to miss out on the game on Saturday, but unfortunately that's how things were."

Although he wasn't there in person the 27-year-old certainly felt his team-mates' disappointment at the FA Cup defeat: "I could see a bit of live streaming on the internet so I saw a bit of it, and unfortunately we didn't get the result we were hoping for, it was a tough game and Carlisle have been doing well the last couple of games.

"We have been on a roll for a long time now and kept on winning and it's difficult to go week in, week out winning every game and big credit to Carlisle they've been doing well the last couple of weeks."

Askou says that the Canaries now have to focus on the next game against The Shrimpers: "It's always disappointing when you lose football games and we were hoping to get through to the next round and possibly have a good draw with a good opponent - it could have been fun to play against a Premier League team, but that's not how it went and we now have to get back on the horse and we already have another game and we have to be ready for that.

"We're no worse a team than we were last week, it's just getting back up and getting back into that winning streak that we were in before. There's still plenty of confidence and plenty of good players in the squad to get back in the game and get another good result."

With two new faces having arrived at Colney last week in the form of winger Anthony McNamee and right-back Russell Martin, the Dane explained they were already making an impression: "I just trained with them once last week," he said. "They're both good players and showed some good skills and some positive spirit already the first day they came in, so hopefully they'll be able to help us achieve promotion to the Championship.

"It's always good with new people, they bring some new energy and different things into the squad so it's always good for new people to come in."

Asked if the English league's busy fixture schedule was something he'd experienced before in his career overseas, he replied: "I've already played 22 games, which would normally take me to two-thirds of the season in Denmark and Turkey to play that many games. Of course it's a big difference to me, but I'm finding myself quite comfortable doing it. I like playing games and I've been lucky, I've been fit so far to play and train and when we're winning I'm enjoying it."

He continued: "That is why the gaffer wants to bring in some fresh energy and some new people to strengthen the squad, because we are going to need everybody throughout the whole season. It's a long season and maybe in total we're going to play more than 50 games, so we're not going to be able to play the same 11 all the time, so we're going to need some help from everybody."

Tickets for tonight's match with Southend at Roots Hall (7.45pm) are available from the Carrow Road ticket office until noon today.

Also watch the Canaries take on Oldham this Saturday at Carrow Road (3pm). Seats are on general sale by logging on to online ticketing, by calling 0844 826 1902, or in person at Carrow Road ticket office or the Canary Store in the Mall, Norwich.