The early return of Alex Pritchard has been a shining light for City boss Daniel Farke amid the gloom of six Championship games without a win.

Pritchard played the closing stages of City’s 1-1 home draw with Preston on Saturday, returning from pre-season ankle ligament damage ahead of schedule.

Farke took a calculated risk in throwing the 24-year-old into action, after former Canaries boss Alex Neil saw his team cancel out James Maddison’s fine free-kick in the 70th minute.

“On the one hand I thought it was perhaps a little too early but I wanted to give a sign in the last 15 minutes that we would give everything and take a few more risks to win the game,” the German coach said. “I was thinking the guys were so annoyed because of conceding the goal and got the feeling that perhaps it was the right decision.

“I knew that Alex was not there 100 percent in the moment but sometimes he can create something special and we were waiting for this.

“Thank goodness he was able to play this 15 minutes, it’s good for him on his comeback trail and hopefully he can be there 100 percent pretty soon.”

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Although the former Tottenham man wasn’t able to prevent a seventh straight Carrow Road game without a victory, he could now play a bigger role in Friday’s tough trip to second-placed Cardiff.

Farke admitted the absence of injured senior players including Timm Klose and Alex Tettey is causing him problems though.

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“We conceded a goal out of a set-piece,” he continued. “I could accuse that we were too soft before the set-piece, we were too soft or naive to defend this situation, but when I look at my starting line-up we had a lot of young lads on the pitch, a lot of technical players who are good at passing but in some positions not so grown up.

“We knew that we had to determine this game on our offence scoring goals and there would be perhaps some problems in defending, especially defending set-pieces because with Timm Klose, Alex Tettey and Tom Trybull we are there with a different physical presence.

“We had a lot of young, technical players on the pitch and you have to sometimes accept the opponent is better in this area and they were, to use set-pieces, so we have to accept the draw.”

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