Norwich City’s squad is under starter’s orders, with Johannes Hoff Thorup ready to spread the pre-season minutes - beginning with Saturday’s Northampton opener.

The Dane’s first public outing on the pitch, since replacing David Wagner at Carrow Road, is likely to be the first in a series of fact-finding missions.

City’s Euro2024 and Copa America contingent will be missing, while the likes of Onel Hernandez and Liam Gibbs continue to step up their fitness from an injury-curtailed end to last season.

Republic of Ireland international duo Shane Duffy and Adam Idah only returned to training in the last few days, after featuring in early summer friendlies.

City depart for Belgium next week, following a trip to Sixfields, with tune ups against Club Brugge and Standard Liege.

“I think at the beginning, again to give everyone a fair chance, we have to give them game minutes,” said Thorup. “And then of course the closer we get to the start of the season we have to find the team and we have to find the shape and we have to find the starting 11. But also the starting squad for the first game.

“That will come in the last two to three games of pre-season more clear and obvious from the outside. But in the beginning, the first couple of matches, we will give game time to more or less everyone.”

Thorup is impressed with the pre-season schedule he inherited, and was not interested in sourcing a replacement fixture for the original pre-season opener at Stevenage earlier in the week, which was cancelled due to emergency pitch work.  

“I was quite clear from the beginning when that one was cancelled that, no, we use a training week instead,” he said. “Because players have to get used to a new way of approaching their everyday life with the preparation that we do, with the sessions that we do, with the intensity and the cognitive learning in it, which is, to be fair, also for some players a little bit more than what they are used to.

“And I think we could easily use a training week before we have the first game of the pre-season. That was more than fine with me.

“What was important for me was that it is high level games. So it's against clubs from the Bundesliga, from the Belgium league, Club Brugge who performed well last season and Standard Liege, the same. So top level, where you can get into speed as fast as possible and play games with intensity.

“It is pre-season, the result is not that important. What is important is that we get up to speed quite fast, and we get used to the tempo of these games. So that's the most important part for us. But I'm satisfied because it's going to be good games.”