David Wagner is backing Andrew Hughes to repeat his set piece sorcery for Norwich City’s Championship run in following the exit of Allan Russell.

The club’s former interim coach, and England set piece specialist, officially left  on Friday by mutual consent to ‘pursue alternative opportunities’.

City chief Wagner confirmed it will be first team coach Hughes who takes charge in the short term, after his stunning success at plotting two short corner goals in last weekend’s Millwall comeback.

“We will assess this in the summer," he said. "But Hughesy already took the lead in the last couple of weeks before the Millwall game. He started with me in Huddersfield as well, where he took the lead for the set pieces.

“This was a moment where Allan and ourselves decided we move forward by parting ways, and Hughesy takes the lead for the rest of the season. I don't like to go into any details at the end of the day. As I said, both parties agreed to part ways and we wish him the best for the future, and we both move on.”

City host Sunderland on Sunday at Carrow Road, and Wagner is keen to keep opponents guessing regarding the Canaries’ set piece playbook.

“Maybe we do it two times in a row,” he joked at Colney. “You can have the best idea as a set piece coach, and work with the players on the grass and on video as well. And then the execution is not good enough.

"Or the opponent reads it for whatever reason, and then it doesn’t work. Same as the manager; not every idea which you have works out as you hope.

“The special thing on a set piece is you dictate when, and how, the situation starts. Nobody else. This is the special thing. And obviously, then there are many different scenarios you can create as an attacking team.

"Defensively, the biggest thing is to defend your goal and win the first contact.

"More often than not the percentage success is much higher if you can do that. It's a very interesting challenge, a very interesting task, where there is big improvement possible. Go back 20 years ago and it was maybe the goalkeeper coach.

"Not a lot of football clubs then had the sport science or nutritionists. Now set pieces play such a big, big part, and everybody knows it.

"We started to get specialists in this area in the last three or four years and it is more common.”