Steve Morison is convinced Norwich's strike force will prove their worth over the course of the Premier League campaign.

City's relative lack of goals in the opening month of the new season has focused attention on the men at the sharp end of the pitch. Morison is well aware of the criticism from certain quarters directed at Norwich's forward line, but the Welsh international yesterday sought to offer some mitigation.

'All you hear is people being negative about us and not scoring but you have to bear in mind, what do we get? One chance a game? Two chances as a forward?,' he said. 'I think Ronaldo had 10 shots on goal the other night and scored one out of 10. It's amazing the criticism people get sometimes.

'You have to realise where we are, the company we keep and we're not going to score two, three or four every game. It's one of the reasons why we've tightened it up at the back and we're not conceding as many goals. You don't forget how to score goals. You know it's going to happen and while we're not, we're not losing the games, so that's a positive. We're a goal way from a win, aren't we? We're doing okay, we're not losing games, I think that's the important thing. We're keeping clean sheets and only letting in one rather than twos and threes. It's something we've worked on and it's working.'

Morison scored nine Premier League goals in his debut campaign and the striker is happy for outsiders to write off the Canaries' chances of a successful repeat.

'We didn't defy any expectations in our eyes,' he said. 'We did exactly what we planned to do, what we set out to do at the start of the season. We went about our job and did it and it's exactly what we plan to do this season. For me personally, you come back, you want to be as fit as you can and you want to get in the manager's plans and I've tried to do as much as I can in the minutes I've had on the pitch so far this season. I'd like to have maybe nicked a goal, but it hasn't happened.'

Morison featured in both league games against Newcastle last season – scoring in the Carrow Road 4-2 win - and he knows exactly what lies in store in front of another 50,000 crowd this weekend.

'Yes, it's fantastic to play at these places,' he said. 'You don't want it to keep being a fascination, you don't want to think 'Wow, I'm here!' You have to realise this is your workplace now and hopefully you can stay for the foreseeable future doing the job. They're a fantastic team, they've got fantastic players. They didn't do too well when they came to our place but when we went up there their strikers were the difference. There isn't an easy away game or an easy game in this league. They're all very, very tough games. You've seen any team can lose against anyone in this league so there's no reason why we can't go up there and get a result.'

Chris Hughton's return to his old club will provide a genuine sub-plot to proceedings, but Morison has detected no change in the manager's demeanour during the build-up.

'He did a fantastic job but it's what these big clubs do,' he said. 'They use people for a little bit and then try to find someone else and sometimes the grass isn't greener. But (Alan) Pardew has done a fantastic job there.'