Johannes Hoff Thorup will admit he is not ‘the most patient guy on earth’ but the Norwich City head coach wants to see more signs of Championship progress at Coventry City.

The Canaries crashed out of the League Cup against a Crystal Palace featuring many of their Premier League big hitters.

The City chief expects the Sky Blues to present another stiff challenge on the road.

“I don't think people would describe me as the most patient guy on earth, but I try to be, and I have to be, because building a style of play you cannot do everything just overnight,” he said. “You cannot do everything in one week.

"So what we did against Sheffield (United) is that we started to work on our low defending and how our position should be.

"And it was actually the first time that we did that, which we also brought to the Palace game, which, of course, will also be the future for us when we defend lower. That was a good step. We didn't concede many chances against Sheffield, and we were solid defensively.

“It's going to be a tough one. What's important is that we can bring the same attitude, the same mentality that we played with against Sheffield, against Palace, especially on the ball, so that we can go to Coventry, we can take control over the game, and that will be important for us, because I think if it's going to be a game where we have to defend too much, that’s not in our favour.

"The approach we have seen the last couple of games is also going to be the approach for Saturday.”

Thorup is wary of the hosts’ attacking threat.

“They have some powerful players up front, and they have some strong players up front,” he said. “You can talk about defending that, or you can talk about actually avoiding that by being on the ball, because then you limit the situations that they actually have. That's the approach that we're going to take.

“Of course, we need to make sure that we are defensively prepared as well, and we know how they create chances, because it will obviously happen in the game and we have to make sure that it's not too many times.

"I watched them actually last season, where they did well in the FA Cup and had some very, very good performances. This is definitely a game where we have to be on our toes, but I'm confident that what I've seen so far in this group is we can take the next step, and that next step will also get us a win on Saturday.”

Thorup was prepared to give Amankwah Forson every chance to declare himself fit for duty after a dislocated shoulder injury scare against the Eagles.

“It seems like that he will be able to play for some minutes in this game. That is quite unexpected,” said the City boss. “Looking at when he slipped, and also looking back at it again on the video after the game, it didn't look that good, but straight after the game he was in an okay mood and we were a little bit surprised.

"The shoulder was put back in straight away actually on the pitch. But of course, we had to do a scan and see how everything looked like. And it was positive news, because he's not really in pain. He was actually back on the training pitch (on Thursday) and we just have to wait and see how he came through the sessions.”

Thorup indicated he had no fresh fitness concerns following the midweek cup mauling and confirmed both Christian Fassnacht (Achilles) and Jacob Sorensen (foot) are set to miss the next five weeks.

The Dane made seven changes to his cup line up but wants no repeat of that defensive sloppiness with league points at stake in the Midlands.

“I was not pleased with the goals that we conceded, because, with all due respect to Palace who are a good side and they have fantastic players, I think it's too easy,” he said. “We give these goals away.

"I'm not satisfied with the first one, where we don't really follow our principles in the game, and we should do better and take better decisions. The second one is individual top quality, which you can expect, of course. But the third and the fourth I'm not satisfied with.

"There's definitely some moments in the game where I think we should have done better and that was also why I was a little bit annoyed with the performance. I'm pleased with the performance on the ball, and I liked the approach after their first goal that we just kept on going, and actually even better than in the beginning.”