David Cuffley Norwich City will bring down the curtain on a difficult campaign in front of the biggest Championship gate of the whole season. Sunday's all-ticket match against Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough (2pm) is expected to pull in a crowd of at least 36,000, with home sections of the ground sold out and the Canaries taking their biggest away following of the season, having already sold 4,200 of their allocation of 6,000 seats.

David Cuffley

Norwich City will bring down the curtain on a difficult campaign in front of the biggest Championship gate of the whole season.

Sunday's all-ticket match against Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough (2pm) is expected to pull in a crowd of at least 36,000, with home sections of the ground sold out and the Canaries taking their biggest away following of the season, having already sold 4,200 of their allocation of 6,000 seats.

The biggest attendance in the division this season was 31,892 at the Walkers Stadium last Saturday, when the Owls beat Leicester 3-1, but they will comfortably beat that figure in a home game they may have to win to avoid relegation to League One.

City manager Glenn Roeder believes a vibrant full house will also be a “huge motivating factor” for his players - insisting that they have plenty of reasons to finish the season with a victory.

He said: “That's great. It's the kind of thing I miss - when you think of 76,000 at Old Trafford. It should be what our players want to play in front of every week.

“I don't like going to places where there are seven or eight thousand in the ground because they lack atmosphere. This is a full house, a big game, a big occasion.

“We want to finish our season in style and if we can get three points, it will make it 50 points we've taken since me, Lee Clark and Paul Stephenson arrived.

“There are a lot of factors why we need to win this game, but the most important is to win it for ourselves - to create good habits, a winning culture.

“We've had enough doom and gloom, getting trodden on, enough pain. We need to get used to winning.”

Wednesday's precarious position, as one of the five teams still in danger of being relegated with Colchester and Scunthorpe, means City's influence on the final table is not limited to their own position.

Said Roeder: “You have to retain credibility with the other sides in danger of going down. I don't want Ian Holloway and Nigel Pearson to think we haven't done all we could.

“I didn't want to go to Sheffield Wednesday needing something from the game and I'm glad we're safe, but we must not roll over like puppies.

“And we don't want to finish below Sheffield Wednesday, which we would if we lost because their goal difference is better than ours.”

With Kieran Gibbs back at Arsenal, his loan spell over, Roeder will be forced into one change from the 3-0 win over Queen's Park Rangers, with Darel Russell one contender for a recall.

Blackburn forward Maceo Rigters had hoped to return for one more game of his loan spell after hamstring trouble, but has been ruled out after suffering a setback in training.

Wednesday boss Brian Laws is waiting on club captain Lee Bullen, trying to shrug off hamstring trouble. Graham Kavanagh (hamstring) could also return.

Hillsborough has a capacity of 39,812, but one corner section of 1,400 seats between home and away sections is seldom used.

City fans are warned not to travel without a ticket as there will be no ticket sales on the day.

Tickets for the game are still available for Norwich fans at £10 for adults and £5 concessions, from the Carrow Road box office or the club shop in The Mall.

City are also running 30 supporters' coaches to the game.