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For a lesson in just what a cruel game this football business is, look at Saturday…

31st March 2008 By theexpert Leave a Comment

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In their previous match against Colchester, the Canaries delivered a polished 90-minute performance.

It was, of course, against the league's weakest team that had relatively nothing to play for save professional pride, but nevertheless City impressed on the day with a credible work ethic and, in particular, their creativity in the final third of the pitch.

In fact, given the relative mediocrity of the standard of football in the Coca-Cola Championship, it wouldn't have been wide of the mark to suggest that in that sort of form most teams would have struggled to contain the Canaries last week in all fairness. As we were soon to discover…

After all, create a modicum of fluency to your play whilst ensuring that you retain strength of body and mind in this division and you'll get the job done more often than not.

That said, and despite after hearing the general consensus of opinion indicating that no-one from within the camp was expecting last week's performance to be a one-off, there would have still been a certain degree of uncertainty before kick-off on Saturday regarding whether or not the Canaries would actually be capable of repeating their impressive display of a week earlier.

Any fears were soon allayed though within minutes off kick-off, because as we were about to witness for the duration of the contest, the Canaries were in inspired from again.

Indeed, you would be hard pressed to find another occasion this season in which they have played better.

Think of all the commendable and inspiring victories against the likes of Sheffield United, Blackpool, Cardiff and, of course, Colchester, and, despite the result, this was arguably better.

It would be only right to indicate that Bristol did contribute significantly themselves to a particularly entertaining encounter by posing Norwich a few defensive problems of their own, but City took the game to their opponents at every opportunity and delivered the ball into the box with genuine quality and remarkable regularity.

And we're not just talking about sticking the ball into penalty area ad hoc here either. Far from it.

The travelling supporters were treated to City manoeuvring the ball with purpose and elegance about the pitch and witnessed seamless attacking play that belied their lowly position in the table.

Fotheringham and Pattison impressed in midfield as did Croft and Huckerby out wide after the break, and with Otsemobor and Bertrand ever-willing to provide an additional outlet on the flanks it meant that the Canaries enjoyed a firm grip on proceedings in all areas of the pitch.

In fact it wouldn't be overstating things to suggest that any neutral observer would have had to double check the league standings to confirm which of the two sides was sitting pretty in one of the automatic promotion places and which was still battling to secure its Championship status.

The Canaries were strong in all departments, and I suppose the only criticisms that could be levelled at the team were two momentary lapses in concentration which lead to them conceding, and another instance of them not fully capitalising on a healthy share of possession and converting it into goals.

Other than that you couldn't have asked for much more.

The bitter disappointment that City will have experienced at losing a game in which they fully deserved to win will hopefully prove to be short-lived ? and almost certainly will if they play anything like this in their remaining five matches ? and this one could probably best summed up by suggesting that whomever first uttered the phrase that football can be a very cruel game was probably on the receiving end of a similar result like this.

Because if points were handed out purely based on performance, and not the knack of directing the ball between the posts and under the crossbar, then City would have been handed all three long before the final whistle on Saturday.


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