Dean Smith had his say on some of the key issues around Norwich City's Championship trip to Blackpool.

The Canaries boss held his pre-match press call on Thursday morning at Colney.

This was what Smith had to say on the following...

Isaac Hayden latest

(Did he get that practice game in?) No, it didn't go to plan. Unfortunately, Isaac had to go for a review back to Newcastle, obviously being his parent club. They felt he had a slight effusion in the knee. So they've backed him off for another 10 days. He's not trained yet. He's ultimately their player.

And to be fair, our medical staff felt it was the right decision when it was presented by Newcastle. But as I said before, he had been running on the grass and working hard.

He just had a slight effusion that they felt required him to back off it. But I expect him back in the next two weeks. That's for sure.

Liam Gibbs boost

I expect Gibbo to train today. He's made a really swift recovery (injured his ankle at Sunderland August 27), which is good. He's completed all his rehab work and the medical team were happy to hand him over to us now. If he trains well he'll be available for selection.

Squad fitness update. Including the latest on Grant Hanley and Andrew Omobamidele

(On the two centre backs) They're both training today (Thursday). They haven't trained obviously up till then. Grant had an injection after the game against West Brom in his shoulder. And he feels a lot better after he's done some non contact training. But that's as much as you could do.

Andrew needed to recover with a slight groin. And it was too risky to go and play games. Both managers and countries were understanding of that. In those situations it is about good communication. Grant got through a game against West Brom but he certainly needed some intervention to enable him to be ready to play now.

Dimi's been out on the grass running as well. Obviously no contact work yet. But he's the closest to being back on the grass of the longer term ones. Lungi (Jacob Sorensen) is still in the boot and just doing gym based work.

Jon Rowe (shin) still hasn't come out the gym with a stress related injury. His latest scan was really positive, but I think he's got another couple of weeks before he can start putting weight through the shin. Obviously Adam Idah had an operation on his knee recently so he is still working his way back from that.

What about your international contingent?

There's a few that I haven't seen yet but I've been in touch with all of them. The good thing is you have players like Kenny (McLean) starts a game against Ukraine and helps get Scotland promoted. He didn't get the minutes in the first game but was involved from the start against Ukraine. AJ (Aaron Ramsey) captains England Under-20s, and scores.

Nacho (Marcelino Nunez) played minutes as well. He'll probably recover today because he's been on his feet quite a bit looking at his training load from being away with Chile. And Sarge (Josh Sargent) has just played the 45 minutes for America as well.

Someone like Max (Aarons) is part of two wins for England's Under-21s and played against Germany and Italy. So we will have some players coming back bouncing a bit.

Mad October. Eight games in 28 days

My analyst said we've got nine games, five on Saturdays and three on Tuesdays. And I did say to him you know that added up to eight when I went to school.

We know there's a World Cup, so we've had to pack some games in. We've just got to see it as an opportunity to go and get as many points as we can, as early as we can. But it's certainly going to be testing for everybody in the squad.

The good thing for me is that it is Saturday, Tuesday, so we actually get to build a process of how we're going to recover and what we're going to do for the next few days in between.

We have a core group who know what this league is about. They're really hardened to it, and they understand it. So they're definitely more than capable of dealing with this schedule.