Pride Joins the Long Ride home
It was heartbreaking to see the ball roll past David Marshall at the City of Manchester stadium on Tuesday night but I think most City fans left the impressive stadium able to take great comfort in the performance of their team. After the doldrums that followed Saturdays terrible performance at Wolves, to play at least as well as a top half Premiership team, has restored some much needed belief in me.
The rousing edition of OTBC after the final whistle and the players coming over to applaud the excellent away following was a great moment to be a part of and hopefully can go someway to forging a bond between a squad that is heavy with new players and ever-longing supporters.
My ratings:-
Marshall - 7 - Composed and commanding. Distribution is still not up to much but a couple of good saves, especially the save from Michael Ball's free-kick early in the first-half and the save at Biannci's feet at the death to keep the score respectable.
Otsemebor - 7 - Showed some cool and classy touches defensively and a couple of timely blocks as well. Got forward and linked with Croft a lot better than he has been with Chadwick but both he and Croft were guilty of making the wrong decisions with their final ball.
Murray - 7 - Did a solid and unnoticed job. Covered his position well, stayed with his man and generally did well.
Doherty - 7 - If it wasn't for the stupid and unneccesary long balls this would probably have been the Doc back to his best. Appeared to be struggling with injury in the second half and wasn't going forward for set-pieces but I dont think he would have prevented the goal if he was 100% anyway. Commanding in the air and generally looked solid.
Lappin - 6 - Looked OK, set-piece delivery could have been better but defensively solid and unfussy.
Croft - 7 - Looked much more like a wide-man than Chadwick, caused problems with his pace against a good defence but often his final ball was dissapointing, Should have leathered the ball when clean through in the second half but tried to lay it back to Cureton. Needs games to get his sharpness but generally impressive.
Rossi Jarvis - 7 - Strong, hard working and not afraid to have the ball at his feet. Looked much more composed and confident than Brellier has so far. Covered for lots of his team-mates mistakes (Russell, Brown, Croft) well in the middle of the park and will soon have more appearances than his older brother if he continues in this vein. Was a vital cog to the machine.
Darrel Russell - 6 - Shocking first half where he could barely even make an accurate pass. Seems to spend a lot of time running around the centre of the park but failing to influence either end of the pitch. Needs to get into the box more and take a few more risks with his passing. Towards the end of the game he improved a lot and finally seemed on the same page as Jarvis and Spillane.
Spillane - 8 - (MOTM) - Physical, confident, classy, end-to-end and creative. My three non-Norwich supporting friends who were sitting with me were very impressed with him and he has made himself virtaully un-droppable. Dare I say, he even demonstrated shades of a Roy Keane type player. I hope he's given his chance because plenty of other players manage to do it at his age in this division and if he plays like this consistently he will become a big fans favourite. I hope his manager will hand him the chance he has now earnt. If Russell had not played would he and Rossi have struck the balanced midfield pairing that we've been looking for? The way in which they played individually certainly suggests they might of.
Brown - 6 - Might as well have not been on the pitch in the first half, playing in an odd half-left-wing, half-centre-forward mess of a position that didn't even nearly play to his attributes. Was much more effective playing further forward in the second half, trying to bully his way to the ball, on the ground and in the air. Still looks about as dangerous as Mr Blobby in and around the opposition area though and in my book thats just not good enough.
Cureton - 6 - Covered a lot of ground and chased the few half-chances he got but unfortunately it wasn't his night. Probably should have done better with his first-half chance that he blazed over the bar.
Peter Grant - 7 - Had he have been able to bring Huckerby on with 20 minutes to go I think we could have nicked it but unfortuantely he had limited options on the bench and I think he was right to not bring on the subs. His 4-5-1 seemed to just about work although it has to be remembered that Man City were far from on top of the game, despite having a pretty strong team on the pitch.
Manchester City will feel relieved that City did not possess the killer instinct to get that all important goal tonight but their manager Sven Goran Eriksson clearly feels that the performance was largely down to his team playing poorly. He told their official site, "Norwich fought, they had no pressure so could go out and express themselves, which they did.”
Coming from such a knowledgeable and experienced manager it must be taken as a compliment by the players that they had the ability to "express" themselves against a team packed with as much quality as it was.
Sheffield Wednesday represents quite possibly the most important game of Peter Grant's reign yet. Lose and the pressure will well and truly be on and of course a win will buy him more time to prove he's upto the job. Unfortunately for Grant, a win will not suffice.
Brian Laws' team have had a quite horrendous start to the season and finally got their first win of the season last weekend against Hull. It is a game that we SHOULD win at home but after the awful performances against Palace and Wolves and the very encouraging performance against Man City, Grant needs to show that he can make his boys tick. If not, he may well be back alongside Alan Pardew sooner rather than later.
My team for Saturday would be:-
(4-4-2) Marshall; Otsemebor, Doherty, Murray, Lappin; Croft, Spillane, Russell, Chadwick (Huckerby if fit); Strihavka, Cureton.
For those of you who don't know, I present a Championship podcast on www.footballfancast.com.
Click here to have a listen to this weeks show:- 