CHRIS LAKEY Peter Grant said he is “absolutely delighted” at the immediate impact Canaries on-loan striker Ryan Jarvis has made at Leyton Orient.

CHRIS LAKEY

Peter Grant said he is "absolutely delighted" at the immediate impact Canaries on-loan striker Ryan Jarvis has made at Leyton orient.

The Fakenham youngster (pictured below) has been sent to Brisbane Road for a month to get him up to match sharpness - and a hat-trick on just his second appearance, in a 5-2 win at Millwall in midweek, was just the result Grant was looking for.

"We had somebody at the games who said his performance was excellent on Saturday, although he never scored," said Grant. "I spoke to him yesterday and he felt he played better in the game on Saturday, and I said, 'I want you to go there and score goals', and he has done that. I was absolutely delighted for him, that's one of the reasons I told him to go."

Jarvis seemed set for a glittering career when he became City's youngest ever player, but the promise he showed back in 2003 has never really manifested itself, and the 20-year-old has still just five league starts for City to his name.

The youngster's problem, says Grant, is that he needed a break from Carrow Road.

"There is no doubt he is a talent," said Grant. "The biggest thing he has to do is he has to have a bigger effect on the opposition. Maybe he has been set in his ways too long - he's been here too long without playing football. He's probably played two 90 minutes now for the first time on the bounce in three years and I think he is getting his just rewards for that because his training has been excellent.

"But he has gone into games and looked really leggy, and I can understand that because of the step-up in sharpness that you need to play at this level is completely different."

Grant has also sent Ian Henderson, Rossi Jarvis and Matthew Halliday out on loan spells, and says only lack of available personnel in his first team squad has prevented him adding the names of Paul McVeigh and Peter Thorne to that list.

"I would have liked to let Paul McVeigh out, I would have liked to have let Thorney out for a period of time so they can come back and be fresh for the first team, but unfortunately that has not been the case," he said.

"These guys have not played for eight, nine, 10 weeks and all of a sudden you are sending them on saying, 'be a match winner for us, play a 90 minutes for us', and it is completely different.

"We train very hard, it is very competitive, it is nothing to playing a game of football, when it is a competitive thing, the crowd is there and it's a need win situation."

Injury worries have reared their ugly head once again this week, but Grant says he is still hitting a brick wall when it comes to bringing players in.

"You keep going in thinking you are putting a jigsaw together of players and all of a sudden it moves back to square one again," he said.

"We phone round managers and they always seem to be saying the same thing, 'we have a hell of a lot of games coming up, we need to keep everybody'. You just hope you get through this period and people recover quicker.

"I still have a group of boys that is more than capable of getting results so I am comfortable about that. I would like to have a bigger squad to choose from, that's for sure.

"I thought we would have a couple in by now. We are always looking, always trying. I have spoken to a few guys who showed a great interest in coming and then the clubs have said they can't allow it, so there is nothing we can do, but we will keep trying.

"But every time I think it's one position we end up saying we are weak in, other positions come up and we end up having to shift the goalposts."