Former Norwich City striker and Canaries legend Robert Fleck has praised current forward Teemu Pukki, describing him as “brilliant”.

The Finn’s 81 City goals now have him fifth in the club’s all-time goal scoring charts, and three behind Fleck in fourth. Overtaking the Scot looks a formality given the 32-year-old’s recent form, after he bagged a fourth strike in as many games on international duty with Finland last week.

The Norwich number 22 has scored more than 25 goals in each of his Championship seasons at Carrow Road, and a repetition would mean he broke the 100-goal barrier at the club.

Fleck only sees this as a good thing for his former employers, insisting that Pukki’s consistently high goal hauls are impressive no matter which division they come in.

Speaking after yesterday’s Football Against Dementia charity game at Carrow Road, the 57-year-old said: “He’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant. For someone to score, it doesn’t matter what league they’re scoring them in, they’re scoring them, and that’s great.

“Most of mine were done in the Premiership or Division One,” he smiled, “but fair play to him. It takes guts to do what he’s doing. He’s doing fantastic, and long may it continue.”

Discussing whether his mind was on retaining his position in the league table, he denied it would be, saying: “It doesn’t bother me. I don’t know how many goals I scored, how many appearances I made for Norwich, or Glasgow Rangers or Chelsea. That doesn’t bother me.

“I didn’t win anything in my career down in England, so it didn’t count for anything.”

The idea of the game - contested by Ken Brown’s Legends and Paul Chick’s all stars and won by the former - was to raise awareness of the fight against dementia, a cause Fleck highlighted.

“It’s great,” he said, “it’s been coming for the last couple of years. Everything’s come to the fore. Big Chris (Sutton) has started it - his dad had (dementia). You look at some of the other ex-players that have had it, and hopefully we can get a bit more out of (the charity game).”