Norwich stand-in skipper Darel Russell aims to re-discover his goalscoring touch ahead of Preston's weekend Championship visit. Russell notched a dramatic stoppage time winner to sink North End at Carrow Road in February and the 28-year-old is already well on course to top last season's five goal tally in his second full campaign back at the club.

Norwich stand-in skipper Darel Russell aims to re-discover his goalscoring touch ahead of Preston's weekend Championship visit.

Russell notched a dramatic stoppage time winner to sink North End at Carrow Road in February and the 28-year-old is already well on course to top last season's five goal tally in his second full campaign back at the club.

The former City trainee bagged goals during back-to-back home draws against Blackpool and Birmingham in the first month of the current campaign operating in an unaccustomed advanced role.

Russell is now ready to go on the front foot again to play his part in helping pep up a Canaries' side among the division's lowest scorers.

The combative midfielder admits City's long suffering faithful will expect a major improvement after recent lacklustre displays on the road at Derby and Burnley left Roeder's men mired at the wrong end of the table.

“I'm looking forward to it, every game's a tough challenge,” he said. “It was nice to get the winning goal against Preston last year. I got a good finish with my left foot against them in that game and I've had a couple of weeks scoring drought now so I'd like to get myself back on the score sheet if I'm playing.

“We just need to keep working hard and get back to how we played against Wolves. We'll be back in front of our home crowd and we need to make sure we put on a really good show for them, to make it up to those fans who travelled away with us the last couple of trips. They didn't get what they deserved with the recent performances so we need to set that straight and get ourselves back on track.”

Russell revealed Roeder's squad is braced for a tough week on the Colney training pitches in a bid to find the right answers to help propel themselves away from another potential relegation battle. Norwich head into Saturday's latest Championship test against Alan Irvine's mid-table outfit one point outside the bottom three.

“We've spent a lot of time in training this week, working on all sorts of different skills and areas,” he said. “We've spent a lot of time talking and concentrating on different types of situations and we've been working on practice scenarios. We just need to tweak and refine our game, and hopefully that will be enough for us to go out there on Saturday and get a result, and help us to progress forwards from there.”