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James Maddison marked his first senior appearance for Norwich with the final goal

Norwich City eased to victory over Preston North End at Deepdale on an afternoon that the Canaries' slim Championship play-off hopes were ended.

Fulham's victory over Aston Villa in the early kick-off was enough to put a top-six finish out of Norwich's reach with three games remaining.

Josh Murphy pounced to put Norwich 2-0 up after Graham Dorrans' deflected finish had opened the scoring.

Thomas Spurr pulled one back, only for James Maddison to add a third late on.

Defeat also put Preston out of top-six contention as they fell two points behind Norwich - a side they have failed to finish above in the English football pyramid since the 2009-10 season, when the Canaries won promotion from League One as champions and the Lillywhites finished 17th in the Championship.

Dorrans gave the visitors the advantage with a 25-yard strike that took a slight deflection on its way to beating Preston goalkeeper Chris Maxwell to find the bottom corner.

A flicked pass back from Cameron Jerome allowed Murphy time to pick his spot and double the lead before the break, while Aiden McGeady went closest to hitting back before half-time with powerfully struck shot wide.

Both sides had chances after the break and Spurr gave Preston hope, heading home from Paul Gallagher's free-kick, before the hosts twice threatened to level as John Ruddy foiled Tom Barkhuizen and Paul Huntington headed wide.

Maddison, however, put the result beyond doubt with his first senior goal for the club.

Preston manager Simon Grayson:

"We left ourselves too much to do after the first half. We started well for the first few minutes but after that we were a shadow of ourselves.

"We didn't have any energy about us; we didn't stop the opposition from playing and they have some very talented players.

"Half-time is the angriest I've been for a long time. I said to the players we want to finish the season strongly, and it's a real disappointment because I don't want to finish the season with that kind of performance. Three games to go and we need to do something about it."

Norwich caretaker manager Alan Irvine:

"I thought it was a really good performance but we could even have had more goals in the first half which would have killed the game off.

"Thankfully we got the third goal just before the end.

"I like playing gifted, talented, attacking players. We try to get as many out there as we can without having an unbalanced team. I thought to a man the players did really well today."