Norwich City's Grant Holt working to improve

Holt has scored two league goals this season

Norwich City striker Grant Holt has admitted his recent performances have not been up to scratch.

The 29-year-old believes he produced a better showing in Saturday's match-winning outing in the 1-0 defeat of Preston North End.

He told BBC Radio Norfolk: "I think everyone will agree I haven't been up to par in the last couple of games, I've been a little bit off.

"I stripped it down this week, went back to basics, it worked out well."

Holt ended a run of five games without a goal at the weekend, his longest barren spell since arriving at the Canaries.

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Apart from hitting the woodwork twice and scoring a great goal, he wasn't in the game as much as he'd of liked. Towards the end we were seeing the Holt of old though

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After suffering a pre-season hindered by injury the former Shrewsbury man made a goal-scoring start to the campaign, but admits he has been disappointed with his recent showings against Barnsley and Doncaster.

"I had a chat with the manager this week about working, it's been documented I didn't have a great pre-season," he said.

"I think last week I didn't work as hard as I normally can and the manager said when I don't do that people notice.

"You've got to be honest. If you don't look at your performance and criticise it then you'll never come out the other side.

"I think anyone who was here today will see a drastic improvement from Tuesday."

City are up to fourth in the Championship after securing their second away win of the season, and despite dominating for long periods against North End, Holt says at times it felt like the victory might not come.

"We were unlucky, we had a lot of opportunities. It didn't seem to go our way," he added.

"You think 'is it going to one of those days again?' We've got a resilient side in there who want to win football matches.

"We don't go anywhere for a draw, we go to win games. It's great we got the 1-0 and it will give the defence and [goalkeeper] John Ruddy a great boost getting a clean sheet."