David Wagner is warning his Norwich City squad they have entered the last chance saloon in the Championship promotion race.

City sit three points and one place outside the top six during the international break, after league draws on the road at Huddersfield and Stoke.

Wagner knows the club’s stated aim of automatic promotion has gone, but wants to plot another route to the Premier League.

“The one positive thing is you don’t have to wait another year. Here in the Championship, you have to only set your target one below, which is the play-offs, and you can get the same reward,” he said. “Maybe even emotionally it is a little bit higher if you win promotion via the play-offs.

“This takes a bit of time to change your mindset. But it’s now on everybody. We ask whoever supports us, everyone around the club, to not speak any longer about how disappointing this season has been, or where they feel we should be. Who cares?

“Now everybody has to really feel, ‘Come on, there’s a chance, a real chance and we don’t have to wait another year for it. We can make it happen now’. And this is exactly what it’s all about.

“This is what this group of players, I’m pretty sure, will have to create the hunger to get this done. Even if a lot of people thought at the beginning of the season automatic promotion is a target.

“It’s so important that everybody changes the mindset. It’s all about a fight for the play-offs.”

Wagner has spelt out the need for a reset to his players.

“We had a few honest conversations about this,” he said. “So that we are clear in our head and focused on the last eight games, and everybody has to understand that is an achievement and a success if we end up in the play-offs, and obviously when you end up in the play-offs everybody knows where it needs to go from that point.

“If you maybe have the disappointment you haven’t reached the target, which at the beginning of the season was automatic promotion, it’s totally human that you had this in your head, ‘We have done this twice before and it will be exactly the same a third time,’ and then you can feel it doesn’t happen.

“Then it is easy to feel sorry for yourself.

“You can easily speak about it but you have to react and show that you have a special hunger and a special togetherness to get this done. Stoke was the first step in the right direction.

“It’s important to create and to find the hunger for the play-offs.”