Adam Idah must keep the faith and his time will come at Norwich City under Dean Smith.

The 20-year-old made another late cameo appearance from the bench in the 1-0 FA Cup third round win at Charlton.

Idah, who grabbed headlines with a hat-trick at the same stage of the competition two years ago up at Preston, has made only two further starts since for the Canaries.

City sanctioned a Championship loan move for Bali Mumba last week, but Idah is set to stay in the building this month.

“It's a real tough balancing act,” said Smith. “I had the same situation at Aston Villa with Keinan Davis. You're not carrying too many centre forwards and if you do let them go out on loan you've got the risk of your main one getting injured, and then all of a sudden you find yourself left with not too much.

“At the moment I think we're working really well with Adam on the training ground, myself, Shakey (Craig Shakespeare), Weaves (Steve Weaver) and we feel there's improvement we can see on the training ground.

"This recent period has given us the chance to work with him. He hasn't got the game time we, or he, would obviously like, but that will come. That's for sure.”

Teemu Pukki has been the main man under both Daniel Farke and now Smith, and underlined his value with the assist for Milot Rashica’s late winner at the Valley.

Smith introduced the key attacking duo at the interval as part of a triple change.

“Both players want to get behind back fours, or back fives as it was at Charlton, to score goals but we still have to win enough possession to feed them,” he said. “I didn’t think our quality was good enough in the first half.

"Their keeper wasn’t kicking it very far and our back four were too deep, probably 15 or 20 yards too deep. We had to sort that out.

"We got our back four a lot higher in that second half so if we did win the header, or even if we didn’t, it was always dropping in their half.

“It gives everybody a boost to break the cycle. From the players and staff to the fans it does everybody the world of good getting that victory.

"In the FA Cup third round anything can happen, as we had seen over the previous two or three days.”