CHRIS LAKEY Under-fire Canaries boss Peter Grant has made an impassioned case for the defence on the eve of the most important game of his managerial career.

CHRIS LAKEY

Under-fire Canaries boss Peter Grant has made an impassioned case for the defence on the eve of the most important game of his managerial career.

Grant sends his struggling team out against Scunthorpe United tonight knowing that a third home defeat of the season would put a serious question mark over his position, just 12 months after he took over the City hot-seat.

The Canaries, booed off the pitch after losing to bottom side Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday - their fourth defeat in their last five league games - are languishing in 21st position in the table, but Grant insists it's just another “massive” game, and that his preparations will remain the same.

“Every game you go into in the Championship is massive,” said Grant. “If we win this game the next game is massive. If we lose this the next game's massive, so it doesn't change for me. Personally, yes, of course I would love a fantastic victory and to win by four or five, but would you see me any different? No. You wouldn't see me any different - I'd still be concerned about the next game.

“For me it is about putting as much effort as we possibly can into it. I want results, I want to be the manager, I want to win games, I want to take us up the table, I want us up the top half of the table, I want us to be up there challenging. That's all the things I want to do.

“I am desperate to do that, absolutely desperate to do that, and the only way I can do that is winning matches.

“I will prepare the same way, the same as we did for Chelsea when everybody raved about us, the same as when we played certain games and everybody has raved about us and the same as we have done when everybody has given us criticism, because if I keep moving the goalposts here there and everywhere, the players won't know where they are.

“The personnel changes at times, which we can't do much about with suspensions, injuries whatever, but I would say the preparation that goes into the game - I don't think we can do much more than we are doing.

“But the one thing we need to do is win games of football, that's what you are paid to do.”

Grant came under fire from sections of the support at the weekend as City lost for the fifth time this season but says he is desperate to get it right.

“I want to be the manager here, I want to do well, I'm desperate to do well, desperate to bring success to this club, desperate to bring us back to the Premier League,” he said. “I have the opportunity at this moment in time - to do that I have got to win matches.

“I am not going to shy away from that; I have got to win matches, that's what we are preparing to do. Once we do that, we prepare to win the next one after that. That's the way I go about my business and that will never change, to the day I leave here, whether I am pushed out the door or whether I leave myself.”