Places in Daniel Farke's starting line-up are still up for grabs.

Norwich City's head coach has challenged his players to press their claims for a start during training this week, following a disappointing performance in a 1-0 defeat at Charlton in the final friendly of pre-season.

The real Championship action starts at Birmingham City on Saturday and Farke wants his squad to make his selection more difficult.

'The first four weeks are about togetherness and working on our strategy and philosophy but you can't judge the players too hard on their individual performances because the load is so big,' he explained as pre-season came to an end.

'But to be honest in the last two weeks it is quite important how the individual performance is because we have to find a starting line-up and the squad that travels with us to Birmingham.

'The last two games were important and there were some good performances but also some performances that I was not happy with.

'There are still some training sessions left to impress and the message to the players is that they had better use this chance in the next few days to be involved for Birmingham.'

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The Canaries followed up a slick 3-1 win at Luton with a 1-0 loss to another League One side in Charlton which left Farke clearly unhappy at The Valley.

'I didn't have a feeling it was a tactical problem, it's always the same when you lost most of the duels, you lose the game,' the German continued.

'I haven't seen any statistics but I had the feeling the winning of duels it was 80 to 20 percent for Charlton. It will be the same in the league, the Championship is an unbelievably tough competition, I think all the clubs who are coming down will be pretty strong and the teams who have been promoted will also be pretty strong.

'You just have to watch what Nottingham Forest or Derby are signing, so there will be pretty strong squads. There are no presents in the league, you have to fight for each and every goal and each and every point.'

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Farke added: 'When the real stuff starts you have to be there and when you are not there 100 percent you will have problems – and this is what we learned (at Charlton).'