Norwich City have suffered their third defeat in a row with a 1-0 at home to West Bromwich Albion.
The Canaries started the game with attacking intent but it was short-lived and West Brom started to grow into the game halfway through the first half. Only a minute after half-time, the Baggie’s record signing, Salamon Rondon, scored the only goal of the game to sink Norwich and send the away fans home happy.
Norwich manager, Alex Neil, was pleased with his team’s effort but felt frustrated that his side lacked a cutting edge to their play.
“First half I thought we were the better side, I thought we had more of the ball, I thought we had more pressure, I thought we had a few decent chances as well, a few shots from distance but we didn’t really test the goalkeeper. They had one opportunity with a header from a corner where Dawson heads it into the ground and over the bar but in the first half we must have had about 10 corners. The bottom line is, the game itself for us boils down to two boxes. I don’t think we defended our box well enough and I thought they defended their box well.”
Neil felt his team have to start being more clinical in front of goal or risk paying the consequences.
“We must have put about 40 crosses into their box, they must have put about seven into mine and they score a goal and could have scored another from a header, whereas we didn’t get on the end of things well enough.At this level when you’re on top and you’ve got enough of the ball in good areas, it’s about punishing teams when you get that. Ultimately we didn’t do that and as the game wears on there’s always a danger that they’re then going to threaten at the other end. Start of the second half, a cross comes into our box and we don’t defend it, they win the header and we concede the first goal.”
West Brom boss, Tony Pulis, was pleased with his team’s performance at Carrow Road and praised his influential attacking players.
“The defenders do a lot of work on the training ground, we work very hard on certain aspects. We talk about it because of the record I have got but we also work hard going forward and we got our reward. I like to play wide players and we had [Stéphane] Sessègnon on the right and James McClean was magnificent. I was really pleased. The back four and the goalkeeper are jumping up and down about another clean sheet but I was more pleased with the quality going forward. We also thought we should have had a penalty and we had a couple of headers as well. The quality of our play going forward was very good at times.”
Norwich have a Capital One Cup tie away at Everton before they face another tricky trip to the Etihad stadium to face Manchester City, who face Manchester United this week.
