Alex Tettey fears the wrath of Alex Neil more than officialdom as he prepares to walk a tightrope at Liverpool on Sunday.

The Norwegian international is one booking away from an early season suspension as he fulfil's Neil's brief to add the ballast to the artistry in Norwich's midfield.

'If you look at the yellow cards, there is a reason. I don't go out looking to pick up yellow cards,' he said. 'I have a role in the team and the manager has made it clear what he wants from me in that position. If it was up to me I would be having zero yellow cards.

'He has been helping me a lot since he came in, in terms of what I should do and always looking at how I play and giving me some advice. He played in my position so he knows exactly what I have to do.'

Tettey has been an ever-present in the Premier League after struggling at times to cope with the gruelling workload down in the Championship.

'Physically I feel fine, I have more to go to be top, top condition,' he said. 'It helps playing just one game a week so I have a lot of time to recover. I haven't missed a training session since the start of the season, although it was really tough to play the Bournemouth game because I had played two 90 minutes in a row for Norway and it felt like being back in the Championship, but I coped well.

'It is hard to say if much has changed in the Premier League. We have played teams at the level of (Crystal) Palace or Sunderland. We will see when we play Liverpool how the level is. Liverpool is a good team and it gives us a glimpse of where we are. That is who you gauge the level against. Southampton we were one man down, which killed us, but the other games we have been good.'

Tettey echoes Neil's belief Norwich should take plenty of positives from a solid start to their campaign.

'I think it has been a good start, seven points from five games, personally I think it could have been better but we would have taken that,' he said. 'You look at the squad now and what we want to achieve within the group it says a lot not to be happy with the seven points.

'The gaffer sets the tone and if you look at our group we have competition all over so those players who get a chance want to take it because if you don't then there is another player who is very hungry to come in and take your place.

'I'm not looking at the table right now. We should start to look at the table when we have played 15 or 20 games.'

Wes Hoolahan's sparkling form underlines Norwich's bullish approach to mixing it with the elite.

'He is very good, so good that I don't want to be up against him in training,' he said. 'It is good to train with a player like that for this type of game because he is similar to a player like (Philippe) Coutinho and you can learn from how to deal with the threat, but he has been very good and I am very happy for the rest of us.'