Jonathan Redhead Defender Russell Martin believes Norwich City's players need a week for recovery after grinding out their record-breaking victory over Hartlepool. The Canaries were below their best on Saturday, but still managed to claim a 2-1 victory over Hartlepool for a club record 11th consecutive home league victory - and complete an excellent return of three wins in a week.

Jonathan Redhead

Defender Russell Martin believes Norwich City's players need a week for recovery after grinding out their record-breaking victory over Hartlepool.

The Canaries were below their best on Saturday, but still managed to claim a 2-1 victory over Hartlepool for a club record 11th consecutive home league victory - and complete an excellent return of three wins in a week.

And Martin, who has played a key role in all three successes, says City need to recharge their batteries before heading into the Lions' den on Saturday when they head to play-off chasing Millwall.

“It'll be nice to have a week just to train and concentrate on ourselves and recover as well, because it's been a tough time,” the right-back said.

“January was a really tough month after Christmas, so it will be nice to have a bit of recuperation. The training will still be hard during the week and we'll hopefully get a good base for next week.

“Millwall is always a tough place. I think they've only lost one game at home so far this season. We'll go down there full of confidence and play the way we do.

“We played well against them on Boxing Day so hopefully we'll go down there and get a result.

“It was a bit of a scrappy game (against Hartlepool) and we didn't really get going but it's another three points.

“It's three points down the road and the results have gone for us with Charlton drawing so we've got to take the positives.

“At times we played good stuff but it's one of those games. The lads have got heavy legs. We played with 10 men last Saturday and have since ground out two great results.

“The pitch on Tuesday was very heavy and some were dead on their feet at the end of the game. We're happy to get nine points and it's been a great week for us.”

As well as claiming another valuable three points, the win over Hartlepool also rewrote the Norwich City record books by making it 11 homes wins in a row.

And Martin was happy to claim his place in history.

“We spoke about it before the game that we wanted to do it,” he said.

“People say it's in a lesser league and whatever, but it's a tough league. In any league to win 11 games in a row at home is an unbelievable feat.

“Players want to write their names in the history books and hopefully we've done that for a while.”

City had to do it the hard way on Saturday but Martin was delighted with the way City managed to respond so swiftly. He said: “I just clipped in a cross and Cody hung well in the air. He's got a good leap. He's not the biggest, but he's good in the air for his size.

“To be fair I didn't see who it was when I crossed. I thought it was Chrissy (Martin) at first then I saw it was Cody and he put it in the top corner.

“We were a little bit too deep in the first half and we spoke about it at half time. The ball was coming back a little bit more than it does sometimes from up top and we were too deep and giving them too much time on the ball.

“We sorted that out in the second half and we had a lot less problems and but still didn't quite get our game going ourselves.”

Another added bonus was the goalscoring debut of left-back Michael Rose after he joined on loan.

Martin said. “It was a great goal and he knows what's required to play. He needs to bomb forward and defend at the same time and he did both really well. I was organising something with Doc (Gary Doherty) and we heard the crowd go wild and saw him launching the throw into the box. It's a good weapon to have.”