GRAEME Murty has urged his Under-18s side to carry their excellent pre-season form into the campaign ahead, starting against Swansea City on Friday (1:30pm).

City's Under-18s won all four of their warm-up matches, including an impressive 4-1 victory over Crystal Palace on Saturday.

"Pre-season's gone really well, the lads have really attacked it hard," Murty told canaries.co.uk.

"They've shown a really, really good attitude to everything that we've done, they've been really on board with the ideas that we're trying to get across, technically, tactically, but also physically.

"We told them at the start of it, pre-season's a process, you start at one level, and the idea is to get everyone through the process, and out of the far end fitter, stronger and better than when they came in.

"They've been really, really positive and they've really embraced the challenge of being professional athletes."

Murty is seeking revenge over a Swansea team who edged the matches between the two sides last season.

"We're really looking forward to it, because Swansea took seven points off of us last season, and we thought we deserved more," he added.

"It's really important, I think, that we continue on a positive upward curve, and we make sure that the players understand that game day is an important day of the week. We'll try to get the physical load right, we're trying to get them peaking, physically, for the game.

"The difficult thing for the coaches, you then hand over the baton to the players and hope they take it and run forward with it.

"Every single player's improved, and improved by quite a bit as well, so, we're really happy with that, although we know that nothing will quite prepare them for the psychological tension of actually playing their first league game."

GRAEME MURTY PREVIEWS U18S OPENER

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