New Stoke City head coach Narcis Pelach admitted the biggest lesson he will take from his Norwich City stint is how tough it is to get out of the Championship.

Pelach accepted the challenge of ending Stoke’s six-year wait to return to the Premier League after cutting his ties with the Canaries.

The 36-year-old Spaniard is not daunted by handling the weight of expectation in the Potteries, as he looks to make his mark in his first head coach role in England.

“It’s a hard league, a tough league, very, very tough. The level is big. If you underestimate opponents you underestimate the league and you are going to get it wrong,” he said. “You never know in the Championship where the points are.

"You could be going to play against the bottom team at home or away and if you feel you are going to win the game, you are wrong. If you didn’t study or analyse the game enough or you don’t know the league, the coaches or the players, you are wrong. Any team can hurt you.

“I’ve been at Norwich City, a top team, a top five or six team before the start of the (last) season and it was really hard for us to get into the play-offs. Really hard. We had to work a lot. We had to go through difficult times.

“We were 17th at one point in the season and we had to come back from that. We finished sixth and we had amazing players, but it was really hard to go to Preston and win 1-0. This tells you how difficult it is all the time.

"If you don’t live your professional day by day thinking there are things that can hurt me, you don’t have a chance. It’s tough and you need to make sure you compete every three days in the maximum way.

“At Huddersfield Town we had a small team knowing that to get one point was an achievement, knowing that we were in the bottom five in terms of money. We got 82 points and were close to automatic promotion.

"It says that if you get it right and do something clever and collect the points, not only the style and structure – which is important but not everything – emotionally people are there. I believe in this, I’m going to work hard for this.”

The Canaries were hammered in a play-off semi-final, second leg mauling at Leeds in May which saw previous head coach David Wagner dismissed the following day, before the club appointed Johannes Hoff Thorup.

Pelach has been joined in the Potteries by goalkeeper coach Paul Clements and analyst Harrison Glew. The trio will face a swift reunion with the Canaries when Norwich head to Stoke on October 19.

“I spoke with my best friend, who is playing the game, and he said if I have to ask you one question, it is what is the dream? What is it that you would like to see?,” said Pelach, in his first Stoke club interview. “I would like to connect the points.

"I think I have the character for getting that, step by step. It might take time, maybe not, maybe it can go fast, but I would like to connect the fans with the players with the staff with the board.

“All together, everyone feeling we are discovering something different. I want them to feel that if Stoke City is playing, let’s go to the stadium and cheer these guys on because they fight, they win or lose but they are there, they feel they want to connect, they don’t want to be alone, they want to be in the stadium playing against Hull City thinking it’s 25,000 against 11 here, not 11 vs 11, someone else is helping me.

“That’s difficult to achieve but there are no limits. Let’s see what happens.”

Former Norwich City centre back Ben Gibson will be a familiar face at Stoke City for Narcis Pelach (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd) Pelach will rely on his experienced players, like former Norwich defender Ben Gibson, who moved on a free transfer in the summer.

“I’m a coach who likes to be close to the senior ones. I think you need them. It’s not that you as a manager need them, it’s that the team and the club needs them,” he said. “They have experience and that is something you cannot buy in life. At 36 there are things you don’t know, at 55 you know much more.

“Of course with reflection, studying and putting in lots of hours you can win more experience earlier but usually players who have been around for a long time have something very valuable to give.

“The responsibility is to lead, to come into the building and set the standards. If a young player needs to focus more on a training session, the senior player can be thinking on more things. They have a responsibility. I will try to talk to them and I expect them to do it. The club is paying them for this as well and they have to do it.”