Dean Smith delivered an optimistic injury bulletin on Grant Hanley after the Norwich City captain was withdrawn in the 2-0 friendly defeat at Celtic on Saturday.

Hanley appeared to suffer a knock to his right ankle but played out the final minutes of the opening period before Jacob Sorensen replaced him at the break.

City begin their Championship campaign at Cardiff next week, and both Sam Byram and Ben Gibson are not part of the Scottish mini tour.

Smith confirmed after the game Byram is expected to return to training from Monday and labelled Hanley’s injury as a ‘contact blow’.

The City boss also hailed the impact of fellow centre back Andrew Omobamidele on his first 90 minute outing since a long term lay off.

“With contact injuries I am always hopeful. Just on assessment the medical staff were quite happy,” said Smith. “He played for another five minutes but then it was just a precaution to get him off. Andrew has had a couple of 45’s before this game and this was his first 90 in maybe seven months.

"He is an accomplished player and he is going to be a really big player for us and that is one of the really big positives that he has come through this game.

“I thought Todd (Cantwell) was tenacious and worked really hard again. You could see he tired a bit in the last 20 minutes and I thought in general we tried to force it too much in those closing stages, too many difficult passes instead of keeping the ball moving to try and open up those spaces.

"Overall Todd is in a really good place.”

Smith also gave his first public reaction to the departures of Christos Tzolis and Pierre Lees-Melou. Tzolis has joined FC Twente on a season long loan, with Lees-Melou sealing a return to France after joining Brest.

“Christos has gone to get game time. I spoke about that earlier in the week. We need him to go and build his confidence up and score goals and get more minutes than he was getting with us,” said the City chief. “He was happy to go out there and we are happy for him to further his development and come back a better player.

“With Pierre he made it clear right from the start he would like to try and play at the highest level he could. He got offered a very good deal to go to Brest, and the football club got offered a very good deal, so it suited all parties in the end.

"I thank him for his time and I think he is a very talented, clever player.

“We couldn’t stand in his way once the offer was acceptable to the football club. We brought in Isaac Hayden and Gabriel Sara and we will bring in another player as well.

"That was always on the radar to do something in that area of the pitch.”