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New Norwich boss Dean Smith has revealed what is top of his list of things to work on and believes there is enough quality in the Canaries’ squad to stay in the Premier League.

Five straight Premier League defeats saw Smith axed by his boyhood club Aston Villa earlier this month. But he was not out of work for long and was quickly appointed as the Canaries boss a week later. It’s no secret that Smith’s brief is to keep the East Anglian side in the top flight. And he believes it is a feat he can achieve.

Norwich are bottom of the table and five points from safety, despite securing their first victory of the season at Brentford on November 6. That win was quickly followed by the announcement that Daniel Farke was leaving the club.

“The top of the in-tray is not to concede goals. We’ve conceded too many already and defensively we want to make our structure and organisation a lot stronger. We’ve got talented players and we need to go and score more goals obviously,” Smith said.

“We haven’t scored as many as we would have liked to. But there’s definitely players there who can do both sides of the job.

“I think there’s enough quality, that’s the biggest thing.

“When I spoke to Stuart (Webber, Norwich’s sporting director), he believes in the squad of players, I’ve looked at the squad of players with Craig (Shakespeare, assistant head coach) and we both believe that it’s a squad that probably aren’t producing the results they need and our job is to improve their performance levels.

“If we do that then we’ll get the results.”

Smith has survival experience

Smith successfully fought a relegation battle with Villa during the 2019-20 season and will be assisted by Craig Shakespeare, who worked with him in his previous job.

His first game at the helm will be a home clash with Southampton on Saturday.

Saints were Smith’s last opponents while he was in charge of Villa. A 1-0 defeat followed by his exit two days later.

Smith was then approached by Norwich the following day and was officially announced on Monday.

“I think certainly coming into the training ground here at Colney and meeting up with the staff, I already have an idea of how Southampton play because we came up against them so recently in the last game I managed for Villa,” he added.

“So it should help me in terms of not having to catch up so much compared to if it was a club that I’ve not played against. But they beat Aston Villa 1-0 so we have to turn the result around with the performance.”

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