NORWICH City will head into Saturday’s meeting with Stoke City (3pm) full of confidence according to their manager.

The Canaries take on Mark Hughes’ side at Carrow Road, looking to pick up their first points on home turf after last weekend’s impressive 3-1 win away at Sunderland.

Alex Neil, speaking to Norwich City TV in the lead up to the game, says his team’s focus this week has been squarely on the visit of the Potters.

“The players deserve all the plaudits that they’re getting at the moment, but the Sunderland game is done and we need to move on to the next one,” he said.

“We played really well again. I thought we played really well in the first game against Crystal Palace, albeit we didn’t get a result.

“I think the players will take a lot of confidence from the manner with which we played, and the fact that we won the game so convincingly.

“We want to make sure that our home form is good, and hopefully we can start that on Saturday.”

Stoke are expected to, at some stage, hand a debut to record signing Xherdan Shaqiri this weekend after he completed his move from Inter Milan earlier in August.

Ahead of their eighth top flight season, the west Midlands club have flexed their muscles in the transfer market this summer – but Neil is adamant City can dictate the match on their terms.

“Stoke are an established Premier League team and they’re trying to push themselves into the top ten regularly. If you look at some of the signings they’ve made, they’re big signings,” he commented.

“If you look at their full game against Tottenham, and I’ve watched the game, Tottenham were dominant for quite large spells in the match and should have won the game. Credit to Stoke though, they rallied and managed to get a point.

“At Premier League level, regardless of how dominant you are in the games, you need to make sure that force it home when you’re on top. If you don’t, these teams are capable of scoring even if it’s against the run of play.

“Ultimately we believe in what we’re doing. We’ve got to force our style of play on them and make sure that we work as hard as they do, or even harder to make sure we can go and get the result.”

ALEX NEIL: WE'LL TAKE CONFIDENCE INTO STOKE GAME

More Club

#NCFC

Principal Partners

Primary Partners