LFL: NORWICH

An away point, another clean sheet and now we’re guaranteed a play-off place. Pretty lousy performance though, wasn’t it?

BEFORE

Saturday's win, combined with poor results for some of our rivals, has given us a big boost and I think we're going to do well again in this one. We battled well against West Brom and ground out a great result which is what we have to do at this stage of the season. It looks like Mundle will be out for the rest of the season so there'll be at least one change in the starting line-up with probably Aleksic or Watson coming into the side. Hopefully Le Fee will play a bigger part than he did against the Baggies. I'd like to see Mayenda starting in place of Isidor as the latter is going through an off period, great though he's been. Norwich are currently in twelfth position and they're on a bad run with just one win in their last six league games. Boro are at home to Leeds and I fancy them to win that one, which would add further spice to the run-in. Once again I'll be watching the game in the company of members of the SAFCSA London Branch and my match prediction is a 2-1 win for us.

I got to the bar about twenty minutes before kick-off and when I checked the team-news there were more changes than I’d expected. Mundle was of course missing but so were Isidor, Roberts and Jobe. Apparently Jobe had picked up a slight injury but Isidor and Roberts were on the bench. There were only a few other members of the Faithful in the place but we soon found each other as the match began.

THE MATCH

We had a bit of a flutter in the third minute when Gunn in goal chose to leave his box and head a long ball away but that was about it for us for an awful long while. A few minutes later we conceded two corners on the trot and then Nunez found a lot of space down our right before putting a cross in that Slimane headed narrowly wide. Alarm bells were going off and they got louder when Neil lost the ball just outside our box allowing Sainz to have a shot on target. Patto managed to block it but not long afterwards, as Norwich did all the pressing, Sainz was there again to get a good header on target, though it was straight at Patto. After a Wright shot had mercifully gone just wide of our right post the stat was announced that Norwich had had 77% of possession. It felt like more and we just hadn’t gelled at all yet. Sainz and Slimane continued to win lots of space down our right and it felt like we were going to concede soon.

In the twenty-sixth O’Nien conceded a free-kick just outside the middle of out box and was yellow-carded but our wall managed to block it. I checked the scores in the other games and Leeds were one-up against Boro but Millwall were ahead against Sheffield United. After the half-hour hour mark we started to get into their half more and that was a relief but we weren’t creating any incisive attacks. Watson joined O’Nien in the book and we continued to get out of our own half more but there was very little cohesion in our play and we never looked like scoring. When the board was shown for added-time, I and those around me thought it said eight minutes and my heart sank but it turned out that there were only two and I was thankful for that as I wanted us to get in and have a good talking to ASAP. It had been a grim performance but we’d survived and it remained goalless as the whistle went.

As usual there were no changes for us as we kicked off again. Not a great deal happened in the opening stages but the yellow cards kept getting dished out, with two for Norwich and Hjelde for us. Norwich had the ball in our net in the fifty-sixth but it was immediately ruled out for a foul on Patto. It had looked like a ‘Hand of God’ effort to me anyway. Our passing had been poor while Norwich’s hadn’t been too great either and even the commentator while trying to say, “Passing accuracy” failed to say the words properly. I hoped for better things as the clock ticked away and in the sixty-second we managed to put together a decent move and Mayenda got a sliced shot on target but it was blocked by Duffy. Our fans were coming across loud and clear so that effort had obviously boosted their spirits.

In the sixty-eighth we made a triple switch, bringing on Isidor, Le Fee and Roberts for Aleksic, Watson and Hjelde and that went down very well with us in the bar. Our overall play did improve after that with Le Fee showing off his close control as soon as he got on. In the seventy-fourth a Mayenda effort looked to me like it had hit the side-netting but it turned out to be a corner, our first of the match. We enjoyed a decent few minutes and apparently we’d had 52% of the play. I don’t usually take much notice of theses endless stats but that sounded better than 23%. Slimane went off injured in the seventy-sixth and I was glad to see the back of him as he’d caused us a lot of trouble. With about ten minutes on the clock Mepham made a crucial block, something he’s very good at, and then we brought on Jones for Rigg. The lad next to me said that he hadn’t noticed Rigg. Jones was soon booked for a 'tactical foul', pulling back Sainz to prevent a counter-attack. We won a corner or two and had improved since that triple-substitution but, apart from a Neil shot deep into added-time, we never really looked like scoring and it ended 0-0.