Arouna Koné’s 80th minute strike was enough to give Wigan only their fourth home win of the season and cause more away-day heartbreak for the Yellow Army.
The win lifts the Latics out of the bottom three and leaves City looking over their shoulder as the chasing pack threatens to close the gap. While defeats for Sunderland, Newcastle and Reading leave the Canaries with a little breathing space the disappointing nature of the defeat leaves the finishing line looking a considerable way off.
One win in fourteen is not the form Chris Hughton would wish for as City stumble head-long into the business end of the season.
Hughton made just the one enforced change from the Sunderland game – Lee Camp taking his place in goal in place of the suspended Mark Bunn – with Roberto Martinez naming an unchanged Wigan side; their last outing being a last gasp home win over Newcastle.
In a fairly uneventful first half it was City – clad in black for the day – who enjoyed most of the possession, albeit with little to show for it by way of clear cut chances.
Robert Snodgrass, Kei Kamara and Wes Hoolahan all created problems for the home defence – particularly on the break – with City retaining a decent shape throughout, but when the half-chances arrived the shooting was disappointingly wayward.
For their part the home side caused a well marshalled City defence few problems with Sebastien Bassong and Michael Turner generally handling the dangerous Koné comfortably. On the one first-half occasion that the Ivorian found space in the City box he side-footed inches wide of Camp’s right-hand post.
At the other end Kamara continued the good form he showed at Sunderland as a lone striker and was a constant handful to Paul Scharner and Antolín Alcaraz, the former relying on a last ditch tackle to deny him a clear run on goal.
City finished the first half strongly but the story was a familiar one; decent possession but very few efforts on goal.
Wigan enjoyed more of the ball in the second half and in general looked the more likely side to score. The warning signs were there for City early on and they were thankful to some wastefulness from Shaun Maloney when he fired wildly over after Hoolahan was caught two on one from a short Wigan corner.
City’s best spell of the second period came just short of the hour mark and saw Bradley Johnson and Kamara both go close within the space of a couple of minutes. Firstly Johnson worked an opening on his left foot but whistled his shot wide of Joel Robles’ goal, shortly followed by Kamara angling a stooping header from Garrido’s cross wide of the post.
As the game opened up it was the home side who edged it in terms of chances created and Norwich were thankful to Jonny Howson’s goal-line clearance when Alcaraz met a Maloney corner with a towering header.
At the other end Garrido’s heavy touch denied him a great chance when some slick City football had released him in acres of space down the left flank.
City were given a warning of things to come on 78 minutes when some intricate inter-play down the Wigan left afforded Jean Beausejour the time and space to pick out Jordi Gomez, but he was slow to get his shot away and gave the reliable Turner time throw his body in the way and block the goal-bound effort.
The game’s pivotal moment came on 81 minutes. A game of centre-circle pin ball ended with Howson and Hoolahan leaving the ball for each other and despite referee Howard Webb spotting a City infringement he played advantage, giving the dangerous Gomez time and space to pick out a pass. This he did to perfection and his perfectly weighted through-ball released Koné in the inside right channel and, a good first touch later, the Ivorian slammed a crisp right-footed drive past Camp’s left hand and into the City net.
While the City keeper will be disappointed to have been beaten on his near-post, the shot was struck with sufficient venom to fizz through his grasp.
City huffed and puffed – Holt coming on for Kamara just prior to the goal – but they were unable to make any headway against a Wigan side who, until today, had failed to keep a clean sheet at the DW all season.
Disappointment all round for City, with Holt’s yellow card for comments to referee Webb’s assistant symptomatic of the frustration felt by all in black, green and yellow.
While there is yet time, the forty point mark still looks a long way off.
Follow us on Twitter
Yet another average performance without any real shots on target. Camp showed his lack of quality and really should have saved the goal – will be lucky to sit on the bench for the rest of the season. Kamara worked hard but yet again i felt Hoots left it too late with the subs. Nervous games ahead, desperately in need of a win, 1 in 14 is not good enough. OTBC.
Unfortunately my patience ha now gone. One win in 14 is not good enough. if it would of ended 0-0 today the commentry team pointed out it would of been the 5th time of that result in our last 10 games. My opinion is that football should be entertaining and as a norwich fan it usually has been (good or bad) but this managerial nothingness of Hughton baffels me. Without sounding like the usual idiots jumping on the sacking bandwagon I feel that a change needs to happen. I really hope things change and as a norwich fan I have more to look forward to on a Saturday than a drab 90 mins but my fear is we scrape premiership survival this year and endure another season of this “football” if you can even call it that.
Living up north currently, I looked forward to watching my beloved city for only the second time this season. Watching from afar I’ve heard and read the groans about Hughton and after watching today’s performance I have to agree. Two terrible teams and a terrible football match which was crying out for some desire and passion. Snodgrass and Hoolahan the only players showing either quality. Kamara strutted round acting like a seasoned premier league player yet his skills and effort weren’t at the levels a player trying to impress a new employee should be showing. Feel for the fans who’ve had to watch that all season.
Norwich supporters have been asked to keep the faith over the last 3 months. We must not worry that our current supporter experience is terrible, our reward will be the heaven of another season in the Premiership.
Well I’m afraid I haven’t been able to believe in this fantasy for a while. Let’s be honest, we are going out week after week with a desire for nothing more than a draw. We are sleepwalking into relegation and all we can read from columnists on this site and others is how astute Hughton is, and that we should trust him to get us to the 40 point Nirvana.
Reality check- we will need to win at least two games, and we have practically forgotten how to do that. Wigan are a poor team, and Hughton should have realised that they were there for the taking at half time. Yet if anything we went further into our shell, playing with no ambition and a complete absence of any penetration. Anyone watching could see their goal coming, and by then it was too late to recover.
We may well get out of this, but Hughton’s negativity and inability to try explore alternative options has managed to alienate himself from a lot of supporters. We have gone from a position of mid season security to relegation material, and Hughton and his coaching staff have to take responsibility for that. The situation is becoming desperate, and I just wonder if we have the ability or belief to rescue ourselves
Too many players gave the ball away against Wigan which is not Hughton’s fault. Martinez gets his teams to pay in the break and careless passes played into his hands. We were fine in the first half but didn’t heed our lesson – just play decent, passing football and come away with a point. That’s all we could have expected from a match against a Wigan side who only get going when they’ve got something to play for.
Anyone who watched us boss Spurs around at CR will know we have more than enough talent to stay in this league. That game, again, was a disappointing result because we should have won it. Instead we banged balls into the box with ten minutes to go at 1-0 up when we should have just carried on playing passing football like we had for the previous 80 mins. That’s the players, not CR.
Granted, he ain’t providing goals galore but we will be fine if he implores his players to just trust themselves. And listening to all those who on Wednesday were hailing RVW’s signing as a ‘great move for the future’ have forgotten that already this weekend.