CHRIS Martin praised the Canaries return to winning ways after his double strike guided City to a convincing 4-1 victory over Gillingham in the first round of the Carling Cup.

Having initially drawn the Canaries level with the clinical finish of a Grant Holt through ball, Martin doubled his tally for the night in injury time as he pounced on Oli Johnson's knock on to round the keeper and secure City's place in the second round of the competition.

And Martin admitted he was pleased to get off the mark this season: "It's nice to get off the mark nice and early," he said. "It's nice to get the winning mentality back into the side tonight."

"We showed the will to win and showed the spirit to get back into it, but we were unfortunate to go behind it was pretty sloppy from us. I think we started much the better side and started brightly, but we still knew we had control of the game I think.

"It was important that we went in front before half time to get control of the game and we then pushed on in the second half. We probably made it a bit more difficult and more end to end than we should have done, but we've done well to come away with the win."

OFF THE MARK: Martin celebrates his second goal
against Gillingham in front of the Barclay

Grant Holt returned to the starting line-up to partner Martin upfront against the Gills, re-establishing a strike force that provided over fifty goals towards City's League One triumph last season.

And with two goals and one assist from Holt, and Martin's double making it four between them already this season, Martin insisted they can spur each other on to produce another fruitful season in the Championship.

"If we can score as many goals as we did last year, we know we are doing something right, especially in a league like the Championship. If we can push each other on, and spur each other to score even more goals then I'm sure it'll be a big positive for the team.

"We know we have the quality in the team and we know we've got goals from elsewhere as well. Obviously, Simeon has come in as well having scored a lot of goals for Gillingham and we've got other players who can come off the bench and from midfield that can score goals.

"I don't think we're going to be relied on to score goals, we can get them from all over the pitch which is important."

Find out who City face next in the Carling Cup Second Round draw by logging onto canaries.co.uk tonight.