Norwich City's Belgian international midfielder Vadis Ofoe has been ruled out of the club's festive plans to fully recover from a knee injury.

Ofoe has not played since damaging knee ligaments on his full league debut for the Canaries in October's 0-0 draw at Sheffield Wednesday.

The 25-year-old saw a specialist in Belgium last week after suffering a setback in his fitness bid and City boss Neil Adams confirmed on Thursday at Colney he is adopting a no risk strategy with the powerful midfielder.

'We still have a tiny concern about his knee so he is probably going to be out for seven to 10 days,' he said. 'It's not serious and we hope he will be back soon after Christmas but not involved this weekend. Everybody else is okay.'

Ryan Bennett played 90 minutes in Wednesday's development league draw against Liverpool's Under-21s to step up his recovery from ankle surgery. Mark Bunn, Ignasi Miquel and Javier Garrido were also involved in the 1-1 Carrow Road draw at home to the Reds.

'It was important to get those lads through the game. Ryan played 70 minutes at the weekend in a practice match and then the full game the other night,' said Adams. 'Mark was another one who needed minutes after his injury. All I was looking for was how they would cope with the latter stages of the game and whether they would need to be substituted. They have proved themselves now. They had trained and the other thing they need now is game-time. They are all available.'

Adams admits City head to Derby this weekend in buoyant mood after hammering Huddersfield 5-0 last Saturday.

'It's obviously great to get those type of results and it gives everyone a huge boost, myself included,' he said. 'It was a very good performance in the second half, and off the back of the Wigan victory, it sends us into the game with loads of confidence and our tails up in the air.

'You can remain positive but results are everything. You'd take a bad performance and a win, of course you would, but obviously the manner of last week's game when we played exceptionally well and scored goals for fun to win the game like that gives you a double lift.'