Grant Holt admitted that Norwich have got the title in their sights after the table-toppers secured another big three points at Oldham on Saturday.
The skipper’s second-half strike was all that was needed and with Leeds drawing at Huddersfield and Colchester going down to a 3-2 defeat at Bristol Rovers, it was a near-perfect day for Paul Lambert’s men.
And with May 8th now in the not-too-distant future, there is one goal and one goal only according to the City captain.
“They are all big games, these are all massive wins,” Holt told BBC Radio Norfolk. “We’re at the business end of the season now.
“You have to grind out 1-0s and get clean sheets. We know we want to win the league, it’s there for us to take – we’re top of the pile and everyone has to catch us now.
“If we win the games we know we have to then we’ll win the league. That was our aim from the start of the season and thankfully we’ve turned it around and we’re there now.
“We have a big March coming up. If we can go through that and come out the other side then we won’t be far off.”
Despite admitting that he was aware of Leeds’ draw in the west Yorkshire derby earlier in the day, Holt echoed his manager’s sentiments and said they cannot afford to worry about their promotion rivals.
As long as the Norfolk club do the business from now until the end of the season, then they know they can’t be caught. The ball is firmly in City’s court now…
“We knew the Leeds score before the game and we went out there and won,” he continued, speaking immediately after the Boundary Park encounter.
“But on the run to catch Leeds we never did worry about anyone else, we worried about ourselves and it is only us we can worry about.
“If we don’t perform and get the results, then we let ourselves down and we don’t really look over our shoulders.
“Obviously you keep a little eye out and it’s nice to know – but if we want to win the league we just have to worry about what we do and win the games in front of us.”
It wasn’t particularly pretty for long spells on Saturday and it needed a crucial save from Fraser Forster late on, with Keigan Parker clean through for the Latics, to keep City ahead.
But Holt insisted that it’s points that win prizes at this stage of the season, not performances. He’d take 1-0 from now until May without a shadow of a doubt.
“I’m not really bothered,” revealed the Canary skipper, whose goal at the weekend took his tally up to 25 for the season. “As long as we win 1-0 I don’t really care.
“As long as we win I am not bothered with the manner it comes – if we play brilliant or it should have been more. We’d have taken a 1-0 at the start of the game, we got that.
“I thought at spells towards the end we were a little bit sloppy, we panicked a bit. I think we could have had more towards the end if we’d knuckled down.
“But Fraser does what Fraser does best and kept us in the game. Oldham are a good side. They’ve got a lot to fight for; they’re down at the bottom.
“And we knew it would be a hard game. They’ve got two big lads up front who are lively and Jason Price, who went on the wing, was lively.
“But I thought the lads at the back were fantastic. Doc [Gary Doherty] and Nels [Michael Nelson] headed everything.
“It was a tough test for those two because they got it rammed down their throat and I thought they were fantastic.”
Lambert made just one change to his line-up with the rested Korey Smith coming back in for Stephen Hughes in the engine room.
And, to the surprise of a few, Anthony McNamee kept his slot on the right-wing. With Wes Hoolahan roaming as well, it was certainly a bold move by the Scot.
But Holt was fairly insistent when asked if the two could play in the same eleven.
“Of course they can, they’re good players and they could play in any team together,” said the 28-year-old Cumbrian.
“They are two talented players and if we could play everyone we would; it is just one of those things.
“We know what a fantastic squad we’ve got here. You’ve got Hughesy [Stephen Hughes] and Mickey Spillane in there and also Gilly [Matt Gill], who didn’t even come on.
“At the moment there are some lads who can’t get in the team but everyone’s pulling in the right direction, trying to get us to where we want to be.”
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