It's certainly a big week for the Canaries ? in fact it's a pretty big month with four home games and two winnable away matches that will take us into the New Year and the January transfer window.
Obviously City must remain in contention with the teams around them at the bottom of the table or preferably out of the relegation zone by the time comes for Glenn Roeder to begin wheeling and dealing in the transfer market, otherwise the task of persuading players to come and join the crusade here at Norwich will become even tougher than it already apparently is.
Trying to convince highly-paid players to up-sticks and accept a fresh challenge here in Norfolk is hardly the easiest of duties at the best of times, but attempting to do so if the team was to still be in serious trouble or – worse still – rooted the bottom of the table would increase the problem tenfold.
Norwich need to continue to put points on the board. And, to be fair, the manner in which they have gone about attempting to do so in recent matches has been commendable.
Against Coventry and Blackpool recently City were full value for their victories, and even though Saturday's trip to play-off hopefuls Stoke resulted in the Canaries returning to Norfolk empty-handed, the standard of football they produced ? particularly in the first-half ? and the manner in which they were able to dominate their opponents for long periods spoke volumes for what the new City boss is clearly trying to achieve with his side here at Norwich, as well as the capabilities of the team when they actually put their minds to it.
As it transpired, Stoke's second-half aerial bombardment eventually saw the Canaries succumb, and Roeder will not have been particularly impressed with the amount of times that his side allowed the Stoke players to find themselves unmarked in space in the penalty area from long balls or flick-ons when that was clearly the only way that Tony Pulis' men were ever going to trouble the Canaries.
But Norwich will not come up against as big or physical a side as Stoke too often, and so they can rightly focus on the positive aspects of their game in the Potteries.
Of which there were many – most notably the improvement in their passing and the speed with which they got men forward on the counter-attack.
Roeder will probably switch the Canaries back to a 4-4-2 formation at home tonight despite the 4-5-1 system he deployed at the weekend having proved relatively successful, and he will be delighted to be placed in the position of having to decide who to leave out of the side once again.
With Daren Huckerby and Lee Croft having returned to the side at the weekend, Ched Evans now battling for a starting role in attack as well as Jon Otsemobor and Luke Chadwick likely to be available for duty again, the City boss will have an embarrassment of riches in terms of his team selection.
The first of these crucial six matches tonight provides the Canaries with the opportunity to put one over the team that basically put them to shame just over three weeks ago.
Anyone present at Home Park that day saw City basically capitulate in the face of wave after wave of Plymouth attacks, but since then it has been a considerably different Norwich side that has taken to the field.
Not only has the composition of the team changed, but so has the attitude with which the players have approached games, and you get the feeling that more from that same mould will be required again tonight in order to overcome a Plymouth team that is once again under the leadership of Paul Sturrock and who enjoyed an excellent 3-0 victory at home to Scunthorpe on Saturday.
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