Marcelino Nunez is still a crucial part of Johannes Hoff Thorup’s Norwich City play-off plan after a couple of ‘super sub’ Championship cameos.
Nunez teed up Josh Sargent’s West Brom winner and almost salvaged a point at Bristol City prior to the international break with a trademark stoppage time free kick.
The Chilean has only completed two full games in 2025, after missing chunks of the season with hamstring-related issues.
But Thorup knows City must protect Nunez to keep that top six flame flickering ahead of this weekend’s trip to Plymouth.
“Of course I want to play our key players as much as possible from the start,” he said. “But also history tells us that we really, really need to be careful with those players.
“We cannot be carried away by saying, ‘Okay, we really need a win in this game, or we really need a win in the next game’, because everyone knows that we cannot afford to lose a player like Nacho for the final part of the season here. We need to be careful in our team selection. As much as we want to play them.
“Against West Brom, we 100pc knew that we had a good bench, and we had good opportunities coming on from the bench. That was also part of the game plan. We knew how we could change a little bit our shape in the second half or, if there was 10 minutes to go and we could actually get a win.
“Then the rest is down to the quality of the players, because it’s top quality from Nacho and top quality from Josh (Sargent), the goal we score. I cannot take credit for that one. It was important for us that we could bring on fresh legs and top quality.”
Thorup must weigh up whether to tweak City’s formation and approach again at Home Park.
“We have probably been a little bit too open and conceded goals out of nothing,” he said. “For West Brom we wanted to make sure that was not a game what we had to score four goals to win. It was about making sure we were compact as a team, a little bit more covering space than being front-footed in our high pressing.
“There’s give and take when you decide to do something different. You cannot get everything. But where we are as a group we really needed the win, and a good result.”
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