The latest edition of the Pink Un Norwich City podcast discussed all the key topics around Carrow Road, from transformed performances to Amber's Army.

Host Connor Southwell was joined by Canaries correspondents Paddy Davitt and Samuel Seaman for this week's episode, where they talked about David Wagner, Kieran Dowell, Onel Hernandez, Coventry supermarkets and more.

Here's a flavour of the discussion, with the full episode available to listen to above or on our YouTube and Spotify channels.

PD: The impressive facet is that it isn’t fortress Carrow Road with 20-odd thousand fans in your corner. They’ve gone to two traditionally difficult Championship outposts and have dominated at both, and the goals they’ve scored and the victories tell you that. 

It shows that what we have now is a head coach who can implement a system with the players who can carry it out, and it looks to be very residually effective against even the better sides in the division. 

Of course, next up after this elongated break is Burnley at Carrow Road. That, for me, is the benchmark. There is a team who do look like champions elect already, they’ve lost one league game since August 13. 

If Norwich can continue in this vein, and perform to this level, and get a result against Burnley with the performance, then you begin to see the pathway opening up for Norwich to join Burnley and Sheffield United, albeit by a more circuitous route in the play-offs. 

CS: Norwich’s expected goals on Saturday against Coventry was 2.21 to 0.59, so complete dominance in that department, which is testament to the attacking structure that they’ve been able to create. 

It’s probably going to be Kieran Dowell who takes a lot of the praise, and rightly so. He’s got three goals and one assist in the last two games, which is a staggering turnaround and does feel like something more sustained. 

Onel Hernandez, Josh Sargent, Teemu Pukki and Gabriel Sara also had good games, and that attacking setup that Norwich have now is one thing, but what’s been lacking at points is that intelligence and that creativity in the final third, that ability to pick those passes out and to locate those spaces when they become available. 

That’s why I end up talking about Dowell again, because it feels like his calmness, composure and intelligence has added an extra dimension on top of all the other various exciting elements that Norwich City have when they are now trying to attack. 

SS: I think confidence plays a very important part in that, not only for Dowell but for the rest of those attacking players. The lack of clarity they had under Dean Smith, the results they were producing and the atmosphere around the club made it much more difficult to back themselves to play that pass. 

Dowell just comes in with a cool head, and he doesn’t panic when he’s in the final third, which is so key when you’ve got this very frantic system. You’ve probably just come off a 20-metre run whenever you receive the ball, so it takes somebody with that level of clarity in their thinking just to pick up their head and to have the confidence to play that pass when it opens up. 

He doesn’t have that desperation that a lot of players in his position would. He’s out of contract in the summer, he’s not somebody who’s necessarily guaranteed a starting spot, and he has struggled for form throughout his Norwich career. But you don’t ever see a time where you think he picks the wrong pass just because he feels now is the time to really force the issue. 

He’s really patient, and as soon as an opportunity opens up that he feels he can exploit, he’ll go for it. 

PD: It’s a lot easier to add the elements without the ball than to inject creativity into a player, so if you’re working with raw material that has the latter but maybe needs to address the former, that’s a much easier task from a head coach’s perspective. 

I’d broaden it out, because it isn’t just Dowell. What David Wagner said about Onel Hernandez applies equally to the English former youth international. He was asked about Hernandez through the prism of what he did at Birmingham, turning it on one week and not the next. You could take the Birmingham label out, put Norwich there instead and say that’s his Norwich career to date. 

But Wagner’s response: that’s your opinion based on what’s gone before, my opinion on these players is based on the here and now. Clean slate, and he said the same about Dowell the previous week.  

For him, it isn’t about what Dowell and Hernandez haven’t done in the past, it’s about identifying players and their strengths, addressing their weaknesses and melding that within what Wagner’s trying to do, and the way he wants to go about the challenge of winning games of Championship football. 

Clearly, given both of those have started his first two league games, he views them as potentially integral elements. To give them both their due, they’re really responding.