Forest 1 Norwich 2 – Canaries tweet us to a lesson in good defending

By: Tim | November 24th, 2008

On the back of a four-match unbeaten run, combined with Norwich City’s own poor fortune of late (1 point from the last 12 available), and home advantage, I think I can be forgiven for thinking we were going to get something from this game. Sadly this match was characterised by inept defending (step up Chambers and Wilson), poor tactical choices and some outstanding goalkeeping from David Marshall.

Things were looking rosy after Doherty was sent off in the 20th minute, but this had the effect of galvanising Norwich and three minutes later they capitalised on Wilson’s poor clearance when Pattison scored with a thunderous drive in to the bottom corner. We piled on the pressure and eventually equalised when Anderson netted his first goal for the reds after latching on to a great through ball from Thornhill.

Unfortunately though, try as we did, after that there just didn’t seem to be a way through a) the Norwich defence, aided by an on-form Sammy Clingan, and b) David Marshall, the Norwich goalkeeper. He produced a string of great saves, notably from a Thornhill free kick, and a Garner header in the first half. Glenn Roeder was effusive in his praise for Marshall: ‘We have a keeper who could become Scotland’s number one keeper. I am not sure which was his best save but I am told it was the one from the (Thornhill) free-kick. He was electric to get down to that one in the corner’.

Norwich kept the ball well in the second half and eventually won the game after a comical own-goal in the 73rd minute. It has been credited to Chris Cohen but it seemed to me like Chambers got the last touch. See for yourself here. With Doncaster drawing this defeat has seen us go back to the bottom of the table, undoing the good work over the past four games. Understandably Calderwood wasn’t too happy: ‘It was a horrible second half, we under performed hugely. We gave the ball back to them too often and created no real danger for them. Overall, this has cost us and put us in a black mood’.

Hopefully the ‘black mood’ will have lifted for tomorrow’s bottom of the table clash with Doncaster, which is basically a must-win game. I maintain that this side has got huge potential; a convincing win will be a great confidence booster.

There are two other bits of news worth reporting from last week. Firstly, we are looking at loan-signing Stoke’s bench-warming former Irish international Glenn Whelan. Good player though he is I’m not convinced we really need him, plus I don’t think having this many players on loan is good for the side (it’s not in Football Manager anyway). I’d rather we were being linked with defenders right now to be honest.

Secondly, Mark Arthur has denied reports that a Middle Eastern consortium is interested in buying the club. Fantastical though this may sound, especially the Martin O’Neill part, the fact remains that Forest are one of a handful of clubs with a fairly large fan base outside the Premiership (see Leeds, Leicester etc), so this doesn’t entirely surprise me. However, I really don’t think anyone will be seriously looking at investing in us until the money is put in place for a new stadium. This is a bit of a Catch-22 situation really, because the last time a new stadium was proposed it depended on Forest returning to the Premiership, yet that doesn’t seem possible without even more investment.

Personally I don’t think there’s anything too wrong with the City Ground, Main Stand aside, although Scott Murray makes the case for it better than I ever could.