Seb Bassong managed to keep Romelu Lukaku quiet once this season and it will take more than a testing outing against Watford's Odion Ighalo last time out to shake his belief he can produce an encore at Carrow Road.

Bassong and Ryan Bennett endured an uncomfortable shift against the Hornets' rampant frontman last weekend, but the duo subdued Lukaku in City's Capital One Cup penalty shoot-out defeat.

The experienced centre-back insists he relishes facing the best the Premier League has to offer.

'It is not a challenge for me facing Lukaku because every week we face wonderful strikers,' he said. 'Romelu is one of them but if you start worrying about these players you are never going to sleep. You know every week you must play these players and that is exciting for me. They are on a good run and he is scoring goals, but we don't focus only on Romelu. We focus on ourselves, first and foremost. We know they have good assets in Romelu and (Gerard) Deulofeu, Ross Barkley, they have loads of good players. As a team if we give a good team performance we can nullify their assets. They had a pretty strong side out in the cup, so did we. We had a really good game on that evening so we can remember loads of good things but it is going to be a totally different game in the league.'

Bassong knows the pressure is on to perform with Alex Neil looking to bolster his squad in the January window.

'We have to show the manager on a daily basis why we deserve to play. They might bring some new players in, that is football,' he said. 'If they can strengthen the team then so be it but you don't wake up as a player in December or January and think you have to perform any differently or do more. You have to do that every single day on the pitch.

'The mood is pretty good. We know we are going to lose some and win some games during the season. After Watford we have to think about the next one and bounce back as quickly as possible.

'There is no reason for us to doubt what we are going to do. We didn't adapt to the conditions and the situation at Watford. That is why we were lacking on the day. That wasn't us. We couldn't impose our style on the game.'

The former Newcastle and Tottenham defender admits City's squad are not making life easy for Neil after one league win in 10.

'With the performances we had, especially in the first 10 games, we should have picked up more points than we have now. That is our battle,' he said. 'We have to fix and address those small margins. It is a slight tweak because the smaller details are sometimes the most important.

'Consistency is tough to get. We do the work on the pitch but it is up to us to deliver on the pitch at the weekend. The manager can't control that, which is frustrating for everyone.

'Football is up and down. The mistakes are the hardest thing to fix. We have done loads of individual mistakes in the middle of good performances, but I don't know one player who hasn't made a mistake. We just have to reduce them because our margin isn't as big as the big teams.'