Daniel Farke hailed his ‘little magicians’ for getting down and dirty in Norwich City’s Premier League survival quest.

The Canaries ground out a first clean sheet since promotion in a 0-0 stalemate at Bournemouth that underlined Farke's squad are prepared to do the ugly side.

"We have many technical players but they also have to fight for the team and for second balls," he said.

"When I see the workload of Emi Buendia, Teemu Pukki, Todd Cantwell or Moritz Leitner, who all like to be on the ball and good in possession, but in the first half (at Bournemouth) we had to be compact. I can only praise my little magicians.

"We have spoken about the soft skills and by that I mean things like showing a good body language when we lose the ball. Or winning it back with players who are perhaps not defensively-minded but understand they have to do this.

"Now we know we can go away from home in this league and keep a clean sheet.

"Bournemouth is a tough place to come. Their speed, mobility and physicality are quite hard to handle. But you look at the second half and we were pretty good at controlling the game and even close to winning it.

"No one has to be scared that we get carried away now. We are still the underdog but for the belief, the mood and the self-confidence it was important."

City will again face an uphill task at Carrow Road this weekend when they tackle Manchester United, but Farke believes a battling Bournemouth point proves they are learning fast.

"I wouldn't label it a slow start. We have had some outstanding games," said the head coach, with his side picking up seven points from their opening nine league tussles. "We played Newcastle off the park, we were able to beat Manchester City.

"We are not naive. On this level especially when you have so many problems there are some tough days and we accept this. We are pretty relaxed and pretty concentrated and just focus on ourselves.

"We know when our players are fully fit we can be competitive, even on this level. More or less each game we are the underdog because we are a newly promoted side who was not able to spend lots of money

"For that we are probably the favourite for last place but we don't accept that. We will show lots of resilience."