Norwich City skipper Grant Holt feels he is proving the doubters wrong by cutting it at Championship level after his latest strike in the club's 3-2 win at Leicester.

Holt's cool second half penalty at the Walkers Stadium was his fifth goal in the last seven league games and 15th in his first full season of second tier football.

Foxes' former England chief Sven-Goran Eriksson labelled Holt one of the best old-fashioned centre-forwards around during the build-up – music to the big man's ears following his elevation from the lower leagues.

'Coming from him you have to take that as a compliment,' said Holt. 'A lot of people said I might not be able to cut it in the Championship but at the moment it's going well.

' It's ticking along nicely for me. I'm sticking the ball in the back of the net quite regularly and it has been a good season but I have a team that is going to create chances.

'It's easy when you have a team like we have got. Lads like Elliott Ward who will step out from the back and is capable of pinging 60-yard balls right to your chest. We have a fantastic side that creates a lot of chances and once again we had plenty of opportunities to kill Leicester off. I was just pleased to see Aaron (Wilbraham) score. He deserved that and I thought he was fantastic because he hasn't had the rub of the green the last couple of weeks but it's a good job he scored because I thought he should have squared it to me.'

Holt was equally single-minded when it came to relieving Wes Hoolahan of spot kick duties after the Irishman's well-publicised second penalty miss of the campaign against Preston at the weekend.

'It's something me and Wes had talked about,' he said. 'We had an agreement last year when I signed that he takes them and I am second on them so I had a chat with him after the last one he missed earlier in the season and we agreed one more chance – so when he missed at the weekend I took it over. Wes is fine. We always had that agreement and everyone knew.

'I didn't want him to miss and he knew that and he was the first one to come over when the penalty was awarded. You can see again against Leicester how good he is for us and how much we need him. It's a rarity to see him pop up with a header, but the way he got into different areas of the pitch he was fantastic again.'

Holt was also the orchestrator of a special bit of team bonding after his spot kick success to celebrate the arrival of injured defender Leon Barnett's new baby.

'He had a baby boy on Monday night so he texted all the lads to let us know,' said Holt. 'He's a great lad and we are disappointed that he is not able to play. He has been fantastic since he came into the football club and the lads wanted to show how much they care for him. We had it planned and I told him before the game what we were going to do and he was laughing but he reckoned he was going to watch Barcelona so I don't know if he will have seen it.

'I thought we showed what a good side we are and on a good pitch how we can pop it about we moved it well and when we had a chance to go long we did it with quality. I thought we deserved the win. I think that is probably one of the best performances we have had this season in the way we moved it and how everybody got on the ball.'

Norwich's squad can now enjoy the rare luxury of a weekend off to watch the latest twists and turns of the promotion race prior to returning to action in the televised Monday game against Bristol City.

'We've said all along we don't look at the teams around us, we just focus what we can do,' he said. 'We know what the goal is and that is to try and get up whichever way we can do that. We've got a great opportunity now. This weekend we can sit back and look what goes on and then hopefully get a good win against Bristol City on Monday.'