Norwich City column: Winning run now key over crucial festive period to close gap on top two

Sometimes in football you’ve just got win ugly. And that was certainly the case as Norwich City marked their return to action with a hard-fought 1-0 victory at Swansea.

Look, it was far from glamorous – and of course question marks will remain over performance levels, particularly in possession.

But there are days where you have to dig in and grind out a result – and Saturday felt like one of those.

Despite their poor recent form, Swansea have once again become an attractive footballing side under Russell Martin – and ultimately hadn’t lost at home for three months. So, credit where it is due.

The important thing now is that we build on the result, as we head in to what could be a season-defining Christmas period.

It’s been noted that during the World Cup break Dean Smith focused his work on our efforts without the ball – and there were certainly signs of improvement at the Swansea.com Stadium.

That will no doubt be tested further in the coming weeks, as we welcome Blackburn, Reading and Watford to Carrow Road – three teams who find themselves in the top eight and who all have promotion ambitions.

That set of fixtures once again demonstrates the importance of the festive period, as we look to close the gap to Burnley and Sheffield United in the automatic promotion places.

With the table as it is, we need to start putting together sequences of wins – as we did in August and September.

To do this, we also need to be better in possession, something which has been a common theme throughout this season – and the Dean Smith era.

I know the evidence suggests otherwise, but I still believe given the quality of players we have at our disposal compared to others, we should be capable of dominating most games at this level.

They now need to start showing it.