Third time unlucky for City

Last updated : 18 September 2008 By John Maiden
What is it about the figure three that makes it lucky for some but unlucky for others? Last Saturday the Canaries recorded their first win of the season in their third away game by beating ten-man Plymouth. This should have set the stage rather nicely for the same players to notch up another three points at Carrow Road in their third home game of the season against ten-man QPR.

On their last visit to Carrow Road, Rangers had also been reduced to ten men early on and eventually lost that game 3-0, thereby ensuring that City stayed out of the bottom three and avoided the dreaded drop into the third tier of English football.

On Wednesday night the rule of three worked against City, because referee Rob Shoebridge decided that a free kick should be taken three times - only he knows why - and Martin Rowlands scored the only goal of the game in the thirty-third minute. His well struck free kick - or should that be three kick - turned out to be enough to secure three points, taking his side into fourth place in the table. Third place would undoubtedly have been stretching the rule of three too far!

The result means that City players really need to take three points from Saturday's home game against Sheffield United in order to restore confidence in their own ability to win matches and to reward more than twenty thousand loyal fans who deserve much better than the mediocre midweek match, which Rangers were able to win with their only shot on target throughout the entire ninety minutes.

A positive start on Saturday could make all the difference, as Glenn Roeder suggested at the post-match press conference, when he pointed out that in the first minute of the game Antoine Sibierski had set up Arturo Lupoli - just as he did at Plymouth for the opening goal there - but on this occasion Arturo's finish failed to live up to expectations. The Norwich manager said he thought this failure to take a half chance summed up his team's performance on the night and few would disagree with his assessment.

Whilst not wishing to take anything away from the skill of the Rangers players, it has to be said that most of them have a strong physical presence - taken to extremes by Matt Connolly with his double booking inside the opening twenty-five minutes - and perhaps the Norwich players were rather too easily knocked out of their stride. If this assessment is correct, the same problem could arise against the Blades who are supposed to favour a fairly robust approach to the game.

During his brief managerial spell at Norwich, Martin O'Neill was fond of a phrase to sum up the attitude his players needed to adopt in order to establish their authority on the game. "Sometimes," he used to say, in that deceptively gentle Irish accent of his, "Ye have to earn the right to play..."

Against QPR perhaps too many City players failed to earn that right, but hopefully they will have learned their lesson and be ready to prove it when they take to the field this Saturday afternoon at three o'clock! Well, I just had to get in another three somewhere, even if it was not the three goals most fans expected Norwich to score in midweek!