Substitute Aaron Ramsey made an impact with an assist for Josh Sargent in Saturday's 1-0 win at Sunderland.
“I’m really pleased with the win, the clean sheet and the will and determination to keep the ball out of our net," Dean Smith told canaries.co.uk after the game. "Can we play better? Yes. Have we been better? Yes. We’ve been better and lost games at times but I thought the lads showed a lot of spirit.
"Tactically, we got stretched too much today. We knew they were going to play into their front two and play off them and we needed to get higher up the pitch. When we were attacking, we had some really good opportunities from counters and didn’t use them.
"I thought both teams had big chances and got good blocks in, so I’m really pleased with the three points and it keeps us ticking over, but obviously there’s a lot to work on still. I thought the bench changed it as well for us and it just shows we’ve got a good, deep squad who can actually go and change games."
Smith was particularly impressed with the defensive contributions of Andrew Omobamidele and Grant Hanley, who made a series of vital blocks.
“Their strikers are a handful and I saw that last week at Stoke," he said. "We had to deal with that. We work on having a distance from the front to the back of about five cuts of grass, today it was about nine or ten and we just can’t play like that because it gives the opposition too many opportunities to go and play in between you.
"Saying that, we always looked a threat on the counter attack today ourselves and with a better ball early in the first half, Sarge could have put Dowell through for a one-on-one. We walk away with a clean sheet and a win that we’re really pleased with."
On the injury to Liam Gibbs, Smith said: “It looked like an ankle injury. He blocked a cross and his ankle stretched so he’s on crutches at the moment so we’ll find out how it is and hopefully it won’t be too bad."
Squad depth is a key strength for Smith's side at the moment, with senior players having to be left out of the matchday squad.
“Sometimes you need the quality players on the bench," Smith said. "I’ve got really tough decisions at the moment. We’ve got Adam Idah, who scored in midweek, Jordan Hugill, who scored in midweek and Milot Rashica - a number of players who weren’t even on the bench today.
"Having Sam back fortunately gives us that balance. He’d only played half a game until now and I thought he was excellent today by the way coming on. He showed the quality he has got but it’s a squad game and we need a squad. Having good substitutes helps us."
Birmingham City are up next on Tuesday, and Norwich will be looking to keep the positive league momentum going.
“We need to because we’ve played better and lost, but I like the resilience of the team today," Smith said. "They’ve shown an awful lot about them. We weren’t at our best but we kept the ball out the back of our net and that one opportunity when we got the chance, we took it.
"I still think we could have had a couple of penalties as well. Sarge was stonewall as he was just about to shoot and falls over with the challenge from behind. Sam Byram was about to finish and got tugged back, so disappointed with that, but three points and we move on."
City fans had to get up early to travel a long way to Sunderland for Saturday's early kick-off, and Smith was full of praise for the supporters.
“Superb effort to travel all the way up here as early as they did," he said. "It’s a tough place to play because to be fair their fans are partisan and I thought they upped the energy of their players today, but the following we’ve got today is fantastic and we really appreciate it.”