Grant hopes for clean bill of health and

CHRIS LAKEY

Peter Grant has a wish list which he says would see Norwich City turn the corner and clamber away from a relegation scrap.

"Give us a clean bill of health, let's have a wee bit of a rub of the green and we'd be delighted, because if we keep performing the way we are and end up taking our chances I think people would enjoy watching what they see," said the City boss.

Grant has watched his team up their performance levels, without the rewards of points on the board, in recent games - and admits there is a thin line dividing the need for quality and points.

"Football is all about winning, it always is about winning, and you sometimes sacrifice not playing well and winning," he said. "But the most important thing is if you don't win you have got to have something to hang on and see a progression and that's what I have seen in the games we have not won.

"I look at other games, whether we won or we lost, and I thought that was awful, I take nothing from it. In the last few weeks I couldn't say that, definitely couldn't say that.

"I would take somebody saying on Saturday night that we didn't play particularly well but we won 2-0, because the bottom line is you have to win games of football, never get away from that.

"For all the nice football you play at any time, the nature of the game is to put the ball in the back of the net and we haven't done that often enough to win games and we have not kept enough cleans sheets."

Grant points to the goals conceded at Preston in midweek, and Didier Drogba's second at Chelsea last Saturday which, he says, sum up City's bad luck.

"That just seems to be the nature of the beast at this moment in time, whether it's injuries or that little bit of rub of the green," he said.

"You either have a goalkeeper who is different class, like Petr Cech was last week, like Matt Murray was for Wolves, like Neil Sullivan was for Leeds. We are hitting the post, hitting the bar and there are world class saves.

"So you just have to keep going, keep believing. I have said that to them, you have got to be positive. They have been a lot more positive and a lot more brave in the last few weeks than in the period of time I have been here.

"The game is about winning, there is no better feeling in the world."

Performances clearly need to yield points unless City are to be sucked into a relegation battle - and Grant believes they are not far away.

"When we were getting results and not playing well I was very critical of them," he said.

"Now I am in that situation where I think of performances and in probably four out of the last five we have played very well.

"Probably Blackpool for the first 25 minutes we didn't start well, but apart from that take Wolves, take Leeds, take Preston, all so-called big clubs, it's been there for people to see."