Bring it on! Dean Smith and Norwich City are ready to rise to the Premier League challenge against Brentford in a Carrow Road cauldron.

Smith’s squad find themselves staring up at the rest of the top flight, and urgently in need of wins to revive their hopes of beating the drop.

The City chief knows it will call for cool heads and big leaders on what is sure to be a tense afternoon in front of a raucous home crowd.

“I enjoy these games,” said Smith. “These are the games where I have to stand up as a coach, because people are looking at me to see what I can bring to the table as well. Hopefully I can influence the players to a good performance.

“It is definitely about that (holding your nerve) in the big games. We’ve had that when we faced the teams in and around us, like Watford and Newcastle already this season.

"The lads have stood up to it, and have played well. We know that we can play under pressure and that's what we have to do now.

“They've shown they can embrace that pressure. The lads can take belief from how they have performed in these games. We played Everton at home, and they came up trumps, and then the following game was regarded as a massive game against Watford, and they came up trumps again.

"I keep talking to them about taking heart from the fact that we finished above the likes of Watford and Brentford last season, and we need to take that into our mentality.”

Smith baulked at the suggestion on Friday this is a must-win, with Norwich effectively five points from safety.

The Canaries host Brentford, Newcastle and Burnley down the stretch, with a trip to fellow strugglers Leeds United next weekend.

“No, I don't think anything is a must-win at the moment, but it's certainly a must not lose. We're running out of games. We know that,” he said. “A loss against them means they're 10 points ahead of us. It's a big game, because we know they're one of the clubs that came up with us last season.

"We know how hard it is to stay in the league in the first season. We're looking forward to it. We feel we're ready and it's nice that we've got a fairly full squad to go into it with as well.”