Everton’s visit to Carrow Road this afternoon offers a fresh chance for Norwich City to end a winless Premier League run that stretches back to Wigan in mid-December.

Chris Hughton needs no reminding of the bald statistic, but the City boss reiterated the Canaries’ guiding principles have altered little from their best spell of the season.

“I think that says a lot about the quality of the division, the ups and downs you face and where we are as a club,” said Hughton.

“Are we doing anything dramatically different from that period when we went 10 games unbeaten? The answer is, ‘No, we are not.’ Sometimes it is about the breaks and about form, but you know in any run that can change again.

“For a club like ours it is difficult to sustain it week in, week out so there are going to be down periods. You just hope in the good periods you get the points to go with it. We came off the back of a really poor one at Carrow Road against Liverpool and we managed to turn it around and go on a good run. Some of the performances in that run were perhaps similar to what we are showing now, but that is the nature of the game.”

Hughton insists it is league points rather than style points that concern him at this advanced stage.

“Whatever formula it takes. Whether that is a classy performance when you create a lot of chances or a scrappy 1-0 win. It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We have been solid as a team and I can certainly not fault the effort. From that aspect I have been delighted, but we perhaps need to be a bit more creative. We need to be a little bit more of a threat in the final third. I am not so disappointed with the form we are showing but, yes, in some areas of our game we need to improve. It is about having that little bit of quality, that little bit of guile, that little bit of creativeness at the end of it. You hope if you do the right things it will come good.”

Hughton knows City control their own destiny, but a little outside help would not go unnoticed. The Canaries remain one of only three Premier League clubs yet to be awarded a penalty this season.

“I’m hoping we are going to get one very soon. There have been some very close calls,” he said. “I can’t in all honesty say there has been five or six penalties that we should have had. You could say it has been unfortunate, but we also have to do more to force that issue.”