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Where did it all go wrong for Norwich?

By on April 30, 2016

It wasn’t always like this for Norwich City. There were happier days, back when they lost just two of their first seven games this season and scored eleven goals in the process.

Ultimately, however, a stretch of ten winless games lasting the whole of two months from January 13 to March 12 doomed them to almost certain relegation and any hope they might have had to turn it around was snuffed out at the Emirates in a 1-0 loss to Arsenal. Whilst Newcastle United notched a vital three points with a victory over Crystal Palace to lift themselves out of the relegation zone, Norwich succumbed to defeat against Arsenal and dipped to their lowest ebb this season.

Alex Neil’s men felt somewhat hard done by, mustering twelve shots in what would have been considered a promising performance if this match had occurred back in August or September. Yet Danny Welbeck came on and gave the Gunners a second-half lead that once again underlines Norwich’s lack of a ringer up front.

January signing Steven Naismith hasn’t managed to fill this void and no Norwich player this season has scored more than five goals. Sunderland’s Jermain Defoe has seventeen goals this season, multiple Newcastle forwards are close to double digits and even three Villa players have six-plus goals, yet Norwich lack a true hero to life them out of the bottom three.

Only Villa have fewer overall goals this season and it’s become apparent that Norwich simply don’t have the quality to stay up.

“It’s disappointing because it was always ‘nearly’ or ‘not quite there’ for us,” said captain Russell Martin, touching at the heart of their problems.

Even in their darkest hours, they put in solid defensive performances against Chelsea, Crystal Palace, and Manchester City, but routinely squandered leads, most notably against Liverpool and West Ham United (twice). Dire losses to Sunderland, Aston Villa and Stoke City signaled a fundamental problem with Neil’s team, and their inability to finish when it mattered represented the final nail in the coffin.

Although Neil refuses to raise the white flag, it appears all but over for the Canaries. Although they have a game in hand over Newcastle and are only one point behind Sunderland, they have a difficult run-in against Manchester United, Watford and Everton, from which they would be fortunate to muster as much as three points. They’ll be missing January signing Timm Klose due to injury to make matters worse and with just two wins in their last fifteen matches, relegation is looming. The Canaries’ fortunes may depend upon the mindsets of the Watford and Everton players in their final two matches, with the club hoping these latter mid-table squads already have their minds fully on the beach.

Photo credit: Nick from Bristol, UK (Natham Redmond, Fulham FC) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.