Chris Lakey Canaries new boy Jens Berthel Askou already has a fan club - from within the Carrow Road camp. The Dane and skipper Gary Doherty have started two pre-season games together - and the 26-year-old appears to have made an early impression.

Chris Lakey

Canaries new boy Jens Berthel Askou already has a fan club - from within the Carrow Road camp.

The Dane and skipper Gary Doherty have started two pre-season games together - and the 26-year-old appears to have made an early impression.

“Jens has a great technique for heading the ball,” explained City boss Bryan Gunn. “When we were warming up for the St Johnstone match and (assistant) Ian Butterworth was playing balls towards him and he was heading them, Gary Doherty was standing in amazement, clapping his hands, just through the distance and the technique.

“Certainly the aerial strength is there.”

Askou gives Gunn even more options in defence, having joined the squad in Scotland for a trial.

“As Jens said, we want to play football from the back, that's what we worked on in Scotland and he was part of that and we will continue to do that as much as we can,” said Gunn.

“I think we have got a good all-round defender who likes to defend first, but also will pop up in the other penalty area and maybe score a goal.

“He is very competitive in the air and that's good in the opposition's penalty area as well so that is something else that we will benefit from.”

Askou spent the last two seasons playing for Turkish side Kasimpasa, but has now set his sights on helping Norwich back to the very top.

“Norwich is a big club in England and I had the opportunity to come here and get an impression of the club, the players, the staff, the city and I got a very good impression off everybody,” he said. “Everybody has been very kind and very open-minded.

“After being in Turkey for two years I want to try something with a little more of a northern European mentality outside and on the field as well.

“What I saw here was very positive, very interesting and also the club's ambition and goal of moving up going to the Championship hopefully so it is my personal ambition as well to play in the Championship next year and who knows maybe in a couple of years even higher.

“I think I have a lot of strengths as a player. I played in Denmark a lot of years and even though it is very physical we try to play good football, along the ground.

“Turkey is obviously something very different - Denmark is very organised and Turkey is more or less chaos a lot of the time. As a defender it is a good test because everybody just runs forward.

“I think I can adapt to a lot of different styles of football, I can play hard and just clear the balls, but I can also see myself as a football player and hopefully I can bring a lot of different qualities to the team.”