The ACN Match Review – Brentford (h)

Biggest positive

The match eventually ended and we all got to go home. I also got to leave at full time for a change, which was nice.

Biggest problem

We are officially an embarrassment. We went into a must-win game and, as with seemingly every must-win game this season, emerged as a laughing stock. Brentford, the team we looked so superior to just a year ago, didn’t celebrate when they scored their third. I understand that if you’re Liverpool or Man City, but we finished above them in the league last year. They were supposed to be the plucky underdogs to our raging wolf yet today we allowed them to look like competent match winners. Yes, they were dirty and whingey and dived any time the ball got away from them, but they did what we couldn’t do and won the game.

But that doesn’t answer the question: what is Norwich’s biggest problem? Is it that we finally invested but did so in players who couldn’t make the bench? Is it that the players who were on the pitch looked as if they’d rather be anywhere else? It that our sporting director would prefer to gallivant around up mountains than talk to the fans? Who knows. Whatever it is, it looks to have once again cost Norwich Premier League survival.

Funniest moment of the game

I had the pleasure of taking a younger fan to her first Norwich game without her parents, because all 13 year olds have to be inducted into the joy of experiencing the Barclay without your mum or dad standing with you. There was a Mr Carrow incident which she asked me to explain; I obligingly launched into an explanation of why we all find it so funny every single time.

It turns out a teenager’s raised eyebrow and a “right….” can crush your spirit quicker than any goal from the opposition.

Did an along come Norwich happen?

Brentford hadn’t won in about a thousand games. It was Eriksen’s first start since Euro 2020. We hadn’t, as our dear Along Come Norwich editor pointed out before the match, yet endured a true VAR disaster class.

Of course it happened. It all happened. It was as obvious as Billy Gilmour sending his next free kick into the wall.

Norwich’s best player

The sign of a true misery fest is the stadium announcer not revealing the sponsors’ man of the match, so I don’t even have that to fall back on. Despite playing fewer than 20 minutes of normal time I just can’t look past young Jonathan Rowe. From the moment he ran onto the pitch he looked like he cared; he was tackling, he was sprinting, he was getting in the faces of the opposition. It was his assist that earned Pukki his goal. It’s a cliché to put all your faith in the unproven youth product, but when that youth product is the only player on the pitch willing to put in any effort you can’t look past them.

Please, please let him start on Thursday.

What was the atmosphere like?

There have been many matches this season where I’ve thought Carrow Road would finally turn, but for the most part we’ve stuck by the players. There have been boos scattered around, ironic cheers here and there (I’m all for gallows humour, it’s what makes miserable games like today’s bearable), but the crowd hasn’t fully gone over.

I’d say it happened today. Maybe it was the fact that it was all too predictable, or that we’ve seen it happen too many times before, but the first penalty deflated everyone. Gilmour got booed off the pitch. There were chants of “Delia, sell the club” and “sack the board.”

Yet it still started so well. The Ukraine display was greeted so warmly, the first ten minutes were lively and frantic. We all care so, so much. It’s what makes this turning point all the more devastating.

Lungi Watch 

I have it on good authority that he’s not yet match fit (the fact that he’s making the bench over clearly fit players is another issue). If he wasn’t, this review would have consisted of “WHY IS HE NOT PLAYING” over and over again à la ‘all work and no play’.  The moment that man is fit enough to start a match he should be one of the first names on the team sheet, if only because I can’t sit through another match of the Scottish duo misplacing passes and pointing. We were a better team for his presence and we sorely miss his aerial ability and his work rate. Soon. I can only hope he’s back soon.

Summary 

Such was the high of that time it’s easy to forget that our “maybe we’re not that awful” period of actually winning Premier League matches lasted a week. Oh, do I look back on it with fondness, that glorious week where it looked like we might actually do it, when they looked full of confidence and played with their heads held high.

It’s safe to say the Norwich of every other week this season are back. I’m fed up with writing reviews like this, where all I can think to say is that they just do not seem to care, or that they know they’re beaten from the first goal.

Oh, Norwich. How much easier it would be if we didn’t care, if we could watch the weekly capitulation with grim detachment. It is, of course, what makes the highs so wonderful, the good times so thrilling.

If only the bad times didn’t seem to roll around so often.