Dean Smith will tell his Norwich City players they deserve to be on the same Premier League pitch as Manchester City – now go and prove it.

Smith rates Pep Guardiola’s star-studded squad as one of the best in any era, but the Canaries mean business on Saturday evening at Carrow Road.

“It's as good a team as I've seen for a long time, and I thought the Liverpool team that almost went through the season unbeaten a couple of years ago was top,” he said. “Now Jurgen Klopp is saying he has the best squad he has ever worked with and Pep’s team are nine points clear so you are like, wow, those two teams at the moment are something else.

“These are not the games that define our season. But they are games that we go into with renewed confidence, and ones that we feel we can pull off a shock. It is 11 human beings against 11 human beings. Human beings have faults and can make mistakes. Our job is to try and make them make mistakes. We've got to find some kind of weaknesses.”

Smith revealed on Friday sporting director Stuart Webber had given him the inside track on that epic previous 3-2 home win for the Canaries the last time they met at Carrow Road.

"I remember watching the game and Norwich were under an awful lot of pressure. But when they actually won the ball back, they used it really well,” he said. “We certainly can draw on the fact we still have players here who were involved. Teemu (Pukki) was one of them, who obviously scored in the game.

"We'll speak to the players about how hard it is to go and win those games. But we can also talk about our own experience of beating Liverpool 7-2, when they were the champions, at Aston Villa. It's always possible. The so called lesser teams beat the big guns, and we're hoping we can do that.

“The psychology of it is always important. People talk about it's a free hit, I don't see it as a free hit, because we're not in a position to have a free hit against anyone. We're fighting for every point that we can get to remain in this league. If you go into the game not believing then you're already beat. You’ll have players running all over you.

"We can show our lads the statistics that say we more than compete with them physically. Then it's what we do tactically and technically.”