DMITRI Halajko is expecting a high quality encounter when his Canaries Under-21 side host Swansea City in the Checkatrade Trophy on Tuesday (7pm).

Halajko's team eased through to this last 32 knockout game by firing a competition-high 15 goals in their three Southern Group F victories over Peterborough United, Barnet and MK Dons.

With the stakes raised at Carrow Road this week, he believes his players will increase their level once again.

"They don't get to play in too many games where something is riding on it, that's maybe a criticism of development football at times," Halajko told canaries.co.uk.

"The young ones really want to go as far as they can in this competition and it'll focus everybody into making sure they bring their best game. I expect it to up the quality and up the standard of our players.

"To have a game where if you lose it, you're out, you dont get any mistakes in that. You get one chance to do it right, and that one chance will be tomorrow.

"Everyone will want to be in the team and everyone will want to be in the squad. It's probably one of their bigger games of the season and they'll know that."

City have recent experience against the Swans having slipped to a 2-0 Premier League 2 defeat on home turf last week.

Checkatrade Trophy games have seen the Canaries field some of their more experienced pros, however, and Halajko hinted that would be the case once again.

He added: "I think both teams will have more senior players, but I think we'll be looking to use the ball a bit better than we did last time.

"They scored two early goals in each half, sat back and we struggled to break them down at times.

"We said after the game we were a little bit off on the ball, so we'll be looking to improve on that."

DMITRI HALAJKO: THE QUALITY WILL BE HIGH

More Community

#NCFC

Principal Partners

Primary Partners