Norwich City head into their Premier League opener trying to overcome pre-season adversity but Ben Gibson is confident Daniel Farke’s squad can cope.

The Canaries are preparing for the daunting visit of dethroned champions Liverpool on Saturday (5.30pm) after a disrupted pre-season thanks to a Covid-19 outbreak that cancelled two friendlies and limited game time for several players.

That came to a head when Newcastle were able to make 10 changes against an understrength City in the final game of pre-season, scoring three goals after the break after an encouraging first half from the Canaries.

"I think it's going to be a long, hard season but that's what everyone knows, that's the Premier League,” defender Gibson stated frankly.

"There will be times when we lose games when we have to stick together and there will be times when you win games and it's important that you don't get carried away.

"You have to stay middle of the road, exactly like we did last season. We had one bad week and everyone wrote us off and said we weren't going up - then we won nine on the bounce and all of a sudden we were one of the best teams going!

"All through it, we stayed middle of the road. We'll do the same this year and take it head on.

"That doesn't put us off, we're really excited for the season, it'll be nice to get all the boys back and get preparing and preparing properly."

Grant Hanley, Milot Rashica and Onel Hernandez are among the players who were due to resume training fully at the start of this week, with striker Teemu Pukki able to step up his preparations after less than 90 minutes of pre-season game time.

Gibson, who banked his first 90 minutes at Newcastle since returning from ankle surgery in March, insists City’s players won’t be dwelling on the Covid-19 outbreak though, as they embrace four particularly tough opening fixtures as a newly-promoted side.

"It's not an excuse we can use,” the centre-back said of Covid-19 issues. “We have to be able to compete and that's the challenge we've got to face this year, that we can't control - we control it the best we can, getting tested every day.

"But it's something that's happened that's set us back, it will set teams back at different times, that's the reality and we have to deal with it - and deal with it better than we did in the second half (at Newcastle).

"Albeit, it was a tough challenge, there were a lot of young lads out there, Andrew Omobamidele, Adam Idah, Jacob Sorensen came on, we had a lot of players who were playing together for the first time, in a different structure.

"I think we all know that we're maybe four or five players off what our first 11 would be, albeit I don't pick the team!

"But we're missing a lot of experienced players there and I think that showed in the second half. Little fouls, being a bit streetwise, professionalism, all the little things that we were good at last season, we weren't good enough at.

"We take the lessons from it and that's the level that we're going to be at."

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