Dean Smith had his say on some of the key issues ahead of Norwich City’s Championship trip to Reading.

The Canaries’ boss held his pre-match press call at Colney on Monday morning.

This is what Smith had to say on the following.

Isaac Hayden fitness update

Isaac’s back running now after a 10 day rest period. It is always a concern when you bring in a player who was fit. We have to remember that he had an operation last season, but he trained for six weeks with no problems at all at Newcastle towards the end of last season. He came in for the first week and trained with us and it was fine. Then his knee started swelling up.

He’s a clever lad. Very intuitive and talks to us about the game. He was talking to me on Sunday about the Blackpool game. He’d obviously watched it and wanted to talk about the different incidents, what happened and where he felt were good. He is a guy we were looking forward to working with and he isn’t far away.

Rest of the squad’s fitness

Of the ones who were involved at Blackpool, Grant (Hanley) had a couple of stitches. You know, that’s the life of the centre back. So he’ll have had a few of them over time. But apart from that, everybody else is fine. (Todd Cantwell’s quad issue?) We’ll have a look later today (Monday). I’ve not had our medical meeting yet, but I believe he was planning to train today. So if he does, he’ll travel.

Regards the longer term ones, nothing different from last week. Dimi (Giannoulis) is back on the grass, but not training with us.

Blackpool reflections

I felt we could have been better in our build. We didn’t build it up as well as we could. I felt we were a little bit rushed on the ball at the back. I thought we pressed them really well and won the ball back in really good areas. When we got into the Blackpool half I thought we were really good on the ball, but we need to stay on the ball a lot longer than we did.

(Did you do anything tactically or positionally for that purple patch after Teemu Pukki’s goal until half-time?) No, not really. I mean, sometimes it’s just players passing the ball a little bit better, and a little bit better movement. We give them scenarios, and we want them to come up with solutions.

And I thought we had some good rotations after the first 20 minutes, with Kenny (McLean) just dropping in at left back, Sam (Byram) going on a little bit higher, and Onel (Hernandez) dropping into the pockets of space. I thought that caused them a few problems and helped us to connect a little bit further up the pitch.

Reading’s start (one place and two points behind the Canaries)

I’m never surprised to see anybody up there at the top end of the Championship. Look at last year with teams like Luton and Huddersfield. Reading have won the same amount of games as us. So we’re obviously aware of their threats.

 

They are definitely a danger from set pieces. A big team, a big strong team. I’ve watched a couple of games and some of the clips, but they’ve been hit as well at times. They got beat 4-0 at Rotherham and Sheffield United scored four. But their home record (five league wins out of six) has been really good. So we’ve got to be very wary of that.

(Paul Ince factor) I’m probably surprised he’s been out of the game so long before he came back in at Reading. I thought his record was really good. He started at Macclesfield and MK Dons and worked his way up to Blackburn as well. I’ve got a lot of respect for him.