Chris Hughton warns it is time for Norwich City to control their own Premier League destiny.

The Canaries head to Southampton four points clear of the bottom three but with relegation rivals Crystal Palace, West Brom and Sunderland all having games in hand. Hughton knows the permutations better than anyone, but will tell his players just to focus on the job in hand.

'To make life a little bit more comfortable for ourselves we have to take care of our own results,' he said. 'We are always conscious of what could happen around us but we feel we should be three or four points better off than we are. It has been like this for a while now. We have been in a group where you can move up or down three or four places with any given result.

'Every game is important. A lot has been spoken about our last four games and there is no doubt they are tough fixtures, but we have managed to get results against the top sides so no-one here is thinking we are not capable of picking up points from those last four league fixtures.

'We have nine games to go, that is nine opportunities to get points and when you get to the stage where the games start to run out they become even bigger. That means the focal point has to be the next one, and that is Southampton.'

Hughton will not waste time or energy trying to second guess how the survival scrap will unfold over the closing weeks of the Premier League campaign.

'Of course I look at the league table, the same as anybody, but I don't need to look at it more than once. We know where we are and what we are striving to be,' he said. 'We don't know what it will take in terms of points. I'm not sure anybody can predict that with the inconsistency of the teams around us and there will be a lot of managers saying the same things.'