CHRIS Hughton insists his team will be doing everything they can to progress in the FA Cup against Fulham on Saturday – even after a hectic Christmas period of Premier League football.

The Canaries will have played five matches in a fortnight on completion of tomorrow’s game, but Hughton says they won’t be taking the competition lightly after describing it as ‘nice distraction’.

“It is an opportunity to use the squad, but with the main objective still of making sure that we go through,” said City’s boss at his pre-match press conference on Thursday afternoon.

“It’s a nice distraction. It’s a cup competition that everybody looks forward to. We are playing against a good opposition which makes the task tougher, but we are at home.

“There isn’t anybody that doesn’t enjoy the feel of the FA Cup. We have had a lot of games in a short period of time, so let’s hope it’s a good distraction.”

Hughton revealed that Netherlands international forward Ricky van Wolfswinkel will make his first start since early October, and that David Fox could come back into contention after returning from his loan at Barnsley.

“We’ll make a decision on Fox. He hasn’t played for a while, I don’t think he played in the last five or six games, but we’ll assess that one too and make decisions on the squad over the next couple of days,” he said.

“Ricky will start though, which is something we’re really pleased about. He’s been close in recent games, and has come on and got minutes. It’s a good opportunity for him to start from scratch.”

On playing Fulham only nine days after the Premier League fixture between the two sides, Hughton added: “It certainly won’t be the case that we don’t know enough about them.

“We’re at home though – when that draw came out, something that we said at the time is that we hoped the opposition wasn’t a Premier League club, and that we hoped we’d be at home, so we got one of them. We have to make sure to use that.”

WOLF TO START AGAINST FULHAM

More Club

#NCFC

Principal Partners

Primary Partners