Alex Neil is pledging Norwich City will work overtime to avoid a frustrating New Year transfer window, after revealing they missed out on 'three or four' deadline day targets in the summer.

City were heavily touted with deals for Crystal Palace's Dwight Gayle, Celtic's Virgil van Dijk and Everton midfielder Steven Naismith, to add to the loan signings of Matt Jarvis and Dieumerci Mbokani.

Neil knows he must bolster his squad ahead of the second part of the season for the decisive Premier League push.

'I don't think there is any secret we tried to go out and add quality in the summer,' he said.

'We tried to add a few numbers and unfortunately a few of them actually fell through on deadline day. We had three or four deals lined up and what happens then is you are relying on other teams to bring in their players and that didn't happen for us. I was disappointed in that fact but we will look to try again in January. We'll look to help the squad and strengthen and if we can do that in the right way that will certainly help us.'

Neil insists it is still too early to suggest the Canaries are already embroiled in a relegation fight.

'The players are fully aware of the situation in the Premier League. There are must-win games for us, albeit you want to win every game, but there are some more winnable than others,' he said.

'Anybody who is out of the top eight will be saying the same thing, that they need to get as many points as you can before the last seven or eight weeks of the season. At this point we could go on a run of five or six games when we pick up points. It is probably too early at this point to talk about being in a relegation battle but certainly come the final five or six weeks we don't want to be in or near the bottom.'