I made my first trip of the year to Carrow Road for the Cardiff game on Saturday – and I picked a good one.

Obviously, I've seen a few games live on TV and I've heard the sort of groans about the football being negative, not good enough - there was nothing negative about Saturday!

It was a pleasure to be there. I really enjoyed it and had a lovely welcome - the football club people in the media room couldn't do enough for me. And to top it all off it was the best performance of the season according to a lot of people. I thought it was a really, really top performance, they were head and shoulders better than Cardiff.

Norwich passed the ball with a good urgency and a good tempo – it was chalk and cheese, men against boys. I don't think the scoreline was a true reflection of the game. I think it could have been double that. In all honesty, I think they could have got seven or eight on the day had they taken their chances.

Yes, Cardiff were poor, but I think they were poor because they were made to look poor by a very, very good Norwich side.

The way they responded to Cardiff’s goal with two goals in the last six minutes of the first half was excellent. And it was that man Josh Sargent again – you just can't keep him out of the headlines at the minute. He's in the right place at the right time.

He missed a good chance early doors but what I like about him is that he didn't let that affect him. When the next one comes along you've got to make sure you've got rid of all those negative thoughts from missing that reasonably easy chance. You've got to make sure that you're in the right frame of mind to put the second one in - and he did.

There were a lot of things to like – what a free-kick by Gabriel Sara by the way. That was a big Cardiff wall he had to get over as well, and it's a magnificent free-kick, but that's what you come to expect because he's a special player.

This is a team that has got the bit between their teeth. Look at the teams that are there or thereabouts fighting for those play-off places. A lot of them have been a little bit inconsistent of late.

I don’t think any of them are playing as well as Norwich are. Only the top four teams have scored more goals than them - not bad for a negative team (I say that tongue in cheek)!

There are 13 games left, and eight of those are against teams currently in the bottom half of the table. Yes, they’ve got to go to Leicester, which will be tough,  and they have Middlesbrough and Sunderland, who have ambitions of getting into the play-offs, coming up. But when you're on the run like Norwich are, the confidence is oozing from the team. I can't see any of the teams that they've got left to come down here turning them over.

It's Blackburn this weekend, a venue City like, having won their last five league games there.

Will it have an impact on what happens on Saturday? I don't think so. What will have an impact is the way Norwich are playing and the way Blackburn are playing. I said recently that to get into the top six, away form has to improve and I think it has improved, even though it would have been nice to have won at QPR.

Blackburn have won one in 11, they went to Cardiff in midweek and it was 0-0. John Eustace has taken over as manager and he's drawn two of his first three games. Under Jon Dahl Tomasson, Blackburn scored plenty of goals and were good to watch.

They won't be like that this weekend, and I can understand that because they are 16th in the table and it’s horses for courses. He's been given the job to make sure that they're still in the Championship next season.

Weighty issue

The Pink Un: Kalvin Phillips Kalvin Phillips (Image: PA Images)

Pep Guardiola apologised this week for saying Kalvin Phillips had returned from the Qatar World Cup overweight.

He said it through gritted teeth - and I can't blame him. I guess it's the sign of the times we live in where you can't criticise anybody.

He’s a player that Manchester City spent more than £40m on, he’s earning a king’s ransom - but he is a professional athlete and for him to come back a kilo and a half, two kilos overweight, I think it's a disgrace.

It's something that's happened to me in the past, especially my time at Norwich and where I didn't do anywhere near enough in the summer. It was in the days before Dave Carolan and his programmes he would give players to do on a daily basis. You just did your own thing - in this day and age, everything is taken care of for them.

I know you have got to be careful these days about what you say, but the basic facts are that a professional athlete who gets paid the amount of money that he does should be fit and ready to go when he's called upon by his club. There's a reason he's only started a handful of games for Manchester City and we can see why. I saw a photo of him in their celebrations last season, he didn't have a top on and I was shocked at his appearance.

I was called a fat elephant by Eoin Hand when I was at Huddersfield . And he was right. I came back one summer about a stone overweight and he absolutely hammered me.

What did I do? I knuckled down, roll my sleeves up and got myself fit.