Doherty hopes Holt's return will restore winning ways

Michael Bailey Gary Doherty believes Norwich City need to get straight back to winning ways after Saturday's loss to Millwall - and is glad Grant Holt will be back to help out. Although City were able to muster wins over Walsall and Hartlepool without their 23-goal leading scorer, his presence was clearly missed at The New Den.

Michael Bailey

Gary Doherty believes Norwich City need to get straight back to winning ways after Saturday's loss to Millwall - and is glad Grant Holt will be back to help out.

Canaries' skipper Holt missed three games following his red card in the win over Brentford last month. And although City were able to muster wins over Walsall and Hartlepool without their 23-goal leading scorer, his presence was clearly missed at The New Den.

Fortunately for the League One leaders, their main promotion rivals failed to take advantage of City's first defeat in 17 matches - but Doherty knows now is not the time for City to suffer back-to-back defeats for the first time this season when they head to struggling Brighton on Saturday.

Doherty, who is a former Tottenham team-mate of Brighton boss Gus Poyet, said: “No one picked up three points to catch us. Leeds only got a point and Charlton and Swindon drawing was maybe a decent enough result for us.

“So we can't be too downhearted. We've been on a terrific run and now the most important thing is going again at Brighton. Hopefully we'll have Holty back, who's a massive player for us, and he can push us on.”

Millwall's home ground lived up to its intimidating atmosphere on Saturday as the Lions harried their table-topping opponents all match, leaving City very little chance to step through the gears after Chris Martin's fourth-minute opener.

“The manager was philosophical after the game,” revealed Doherty. “He thought we played well. Obviously there were a lot of disappointed lads in the dressing room.

“I'm sure the gaffer will pick us up and we'll pick ourselves up, because we know we haven't played badly.

“We've just been done by a bit of an annoying goal with the deflection and then the terrible second goal, so we're disappointed with that. Once we get those errors out of our way we're back to being a top side.

“We know we're a good team, we've got to prove we're a good team and we've got to go to Brighton and win. We desperately need to bounce back.”