Chris Lakey Canaries skipper Mark Fotheringham says it's difficult to stay positive amid City's slide towards the Championship relegation zone.Amid the chest-thumping call to arms lies the inescapable fact that, for the 10th time in 14 away games, City returned empty-handed.

Chris Lakey

Canaries skipper Mark Fotheringham says it's difficult to stay positive amid City's slide towards the Championship relegation zone.

Amid the chest-thumping call to arms lies the inescapable fact that, for the 10th time in 14 away games, City returned empty-handed.

“It's really hard to be positive when you're losing these games,” admitted Fotheringham. “We all talk about the performances and it is hard when we are trying to be positive about it - we would rather take a win any day above the performance. But you set your stall out all week to perform well and go and pass the ball and create chances, and we're doing that. We are just so unlucky at the moment - you can see that in the games, we're having some great spells, but we're just not taking the game and taking the points home and killing the teams off.

“It's so important in this league to kill teams off and then defend for your lives for the next 30 minutes in games. You saw Sheffield, they were happy with the 1-0.

“Norwich have got to begin to believe that when we're 1-0 up there's nothing wrong with winning 1-0 and making it an ugly game. Hopefully fans will understand that when teams come to Carrow Road now and maybe we haven't got so much of the ball, that's okay.”

Only goal difference separates City and the final relegation spot, and Fotheringham says the difficulty of City's situation isn't lost on the team.

“We all realise we are in a fight and we are going to have to stick together as a team and as a unit because it's so important that we get away from this area of the table,” he said. “I think we have enough quality, and we showed that today.

“We have had a very unfortunate season and I think we should be a lot higher up in the table than what we are, but the games and the points that you get, the results don't lie and we are there for a reason. So we have to put it right and we will be working on that as much and as fast as we can to get us up that table where we should be.”

January could be a defining month, with two home games and one away against teams they should be able to beat.

“There are some important games, but we have proved against some of the better teams - Wolves, Ipswich and Sheffield United at home this season - that we are more than capable of beating the big teams as well,” he said.

“But it is important to beat the teams that are round about you. On our day we are capable of beating anyone, we just have to get a little bit more consistency and I think we need to defend a little bit better as a unit away from home because we give away some cheap goals at times. But if we can sort these little things out I'm sure we'll kick on in the latter half of the season.”

Fotheringham admits there is a conundrum - do City try and stick to the passing game or do they go more direct?

“I think we got the blend of football right today,” he said. “There was a good mix of one and two-touch football with Wes (Hoolahan) in the midfield, and we got the ball a lot more into Sibby (Antoine Sibierski) who was causing them a lot of problems with his flick-ons for Arturo - who for me is a very talented boy. You can see that he brings a lot to the team. He reminds of Darren Huckerby a little bit where he can take the ball and run and he brings the whole team up the pitch.”