Norwich City beat Swansea City 1-0 at Carrow Road earlier today which ended their four game run of losses. Dieumerci Mbokani’s nod down from Robbie Brady’s cross was headed in by Jonny Howson from close range which gave City the three points.
After the match, Alex Neil spoke to the media reflecting on the game.
Neil was asked about how the team set-up after an unusual eleven was picked for the match:
The setup was certainly different to what we’ve been doing. When you’ve been performing in the way we were but still not winning games, you need to find an alternative
The City boss gave his reflection how the team performed:
It’s not as pretty as the way I would like – I like to see us dominating games, but the most important thing is winning matches. We managed to do that today.
Credit to the players. I thought they worked ever so hard; defensively we were solid throughout the match, and the best chances in the game came to us. We could have scored more.
Neil admitted that the defensive tactic and what he aimed for ultimately worked:
That’s been the focus this week. Setting your team up defensively is the easiest thing in the world as a coach. The hardest thing is to add the layer where you’re causing teams problems going forward,
I felt we had that. It’s something we can improve on, but when we got the goal there was more confidence.
Norwich goalscorer Jonny Howson was also on media duty after the match.
He expressed the importance of the win:
Over the past few weeks we’ve felt performances have been ok in certain games, but you have to collect points. It didn’t matter how we did it, we just knew we had to get a result.
Howson, as well as Neil, talked about the set-up and also their opponents Swansea:
Swansea are a good team who dominate the majority of their games so we had a similar strategy to last week. Over the course of the 90 minutes we had the better chances, which shows it came off nicely.
At this level you have to be able to change the way you play for certain opposition, and we did that.
Howson also explained his goal from his perspective and how the club have been working on those situations:
We work on set-pieces before the game and I spoke with the goalkeeper coach Dean Kiely, who sets us up for certain things. He gave me a bit of advice on where to go, so massive thanks goes to him.
I was just in the right place at the right time for the goal.
Norwich City have a week’s break now before heading to Chelsea on the 21st November.
