Daniel Farke pledged to ring the changes but make no mistake Norwich City’s head coach is targeting a place in the last-16 of the League Cup at Brentford’s expense.



The Canaries head to their Championship rivals on Tuesday night after a gruelling 1-0 weekend win at Sheffield United maintained their unbeaten run and City will travel in buoyant mood on the back of three consecutive clean sheets.

Farke knows how much Norwich’s fan base crave a decent cup run, and he aims to deliver while protecting some of his key men for important league tussles prior to the international break.

“In Germany, we would say the league is more your ‘bread and butter’ but I enjoy having runs in the cup,” he said. “We have a perfect statistic in the cup, with two games and two wins and we want to go further, 100pc. We have a good momentum right now.

“Before the first cup tie, I said the competition has a high importance. We want to go there and win this game, otherwise, we would send a postcard to Brentford and say: ‘Okay, we don’t want to go through to the next round,’ but we want to try everything to win this game. To get through to the last 16 would be a great success. Also, I think our supporters like cup runs too and especially for them, we want to put on a good performance. That is what we are planning.”

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The likes of Russell Martin and Steven Naismith have been ruled out of the trip to Griffin Park, and recent signing Grant Hanley is cup-tied after featuring for previous club Newcastle United earlier in the competition.

“It could be there will be more changes. That isn’t because we feel the cup is not so important,” said the City head coach. “I have many good players on the bench and in the squad, and whoever plays will give everything for the club and the squad. There will be more than one or two. But we won’t change 11 players, and we have to find a good balance. We want to be there with the best starting XI we can after the recent big workload. It’s not easy to have two difficult away matches in a few days. In the last games we’ve made just a few changes, from game to game.

“It’s important to have some fresh legs on the pitch, and also Brentford is a different team so there will be some tactical changes too. But these changes will be made because we really want to win the game.”