AFTER months of hard work to reach the top of League One defender Gary Doherty is determined to put the Canaries' defeat to Southampton swiftly behind him with a good team performanace and hopefully three points against Southend United tonight (7.45pm).

"We've had to go on a terrific run to get ourselves in this position but now is when the hard work really starts," said Doherty. "Teams that have been top have pretty much slipped up of late and we don't want to be a team like that, we want to get to the top, we've worked hard to get here and we want to make sure we stay here.

"Once you get to the top you don't want to just take your foot off the gas you really want to motor on and make it pretty much impossible for teams to catch you. We had a terrible performance, no one really performed on Saturday, that's something we've got to put right and there's no better time to do that really than on Tuesday night in front of our own fans."

Saturday's 2-0 defeat to the Saints was City's first league defeat at Carrow Road since the opening day of the season, but signalled their second reverse in three games.

"Obviously it's disappointing to let our good home form go to waste because we've been on a good run, but that sometimes happens they came and played well and end of story now.

"We had a talk about it and realise what we've been doing wrong and what we've got to put right.

"It's more defeats than we want. Obviously Leeds and Charlton have slipped up a bit more than us of late but we need to put it right. We have a massive game tonight and we need the three points."

The 30-year-old admits City haven't been firing on all cylinders in recent matches and is looking for an improved performance in front of a home crowd: "Night games are always terrific at Carrow Road, it's always something you look forward to - it's great to play under the lights in front of a great crowd. There will be 25,000 there cheering us on and we've got to give them something to cheer."

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