NORWICH CITY 1
Sargent 90+1
WEST BROM 0
Johannes Hoff Thorup saluted match-winner Josh Sargent and insisted Norwich City can still gatecrash the Championship play-offs after this dramatic victory against West Bromwich Albion.
Sargent’s well-taken injury-time strike took the Canaries to within five points of the play-off positions with seven games remaining.
The victory for Norwich put a dent in the visitors’ hopes of finishing in the top six, as the Baggies suffered their first loss in six games.
After the match, Thorup insisted that the belief is there for his City squad.
Confident
“Even before the match, the lads were confident we were still in with a chance,” said the Norwich head coach.
“We needed to win this one, and now [that] we have, we can look forward to a final push.
“Obviously, we need to go on a run and win more games than we have been doing recently, but this is a good start.
“We have been on the wrong end of the result in quite a few 50-50 games this season, so it was good to be on the right side this time.
“We got the goal in the end, thanks to Josh’s late strike, and it was good to get a clean sheet too.
“It’s no secret we have been a bit too open recently and have conceded too many goals, so we changed things a bit to give the lads at the back a bit more protection.
“It worked well, although it does make other aspects of the game a bit more difficult.
“We certainly weren’t on the front foot as much as we normally are.”
Match action
The Baggies had two good chances to take the lead in the space of less than a minute early on, with home goalkeeper Angus Gunn twice being called into action.
The Scottish international got just enough on a low drive from Karlan Grant to turn the ball round the post and then made a terrific stop at his near post to keep out a goal-bound header from Torbjorn Heggem.
Norwich posed the occasional threat and carved out probably the clearest chance of the opening period after 16 minutes.
Sargent had a clear sight of goal after being put through by Borja Sainz and it took an excellent stop from Joe Wildsmith to deny him, with Ante Crnac then firing the loose ball just wide.
However, the visitors continued to have marginally the better of it, and Gunn made another good stop to keep out a low curler from Grant towards the end of the half.
Second half
Sainz fired a shot straight at Wildsmith from a good position as the Canaries started the second half strongly, but it didn’t last as a competitive game became increasingly scrappy.
The hosts had another chance in the 84th minute when Sargent was brought down on the edge of the area, and substitute Marcelino Nunez curled the resulting free-kick just wide.
But Norwich kept pushing forward and got their reward in the second minute of injury time.
A careless loss of possession enabled substitute Marcelino Nunez to thread a ball through to Sargent, who showed great composure to hold off chasing defender Kyle Bartley before steering the ball past Wildsmith for a dramatic winner.
Although Albion dominated possession, they rarely troubled the Norwich backline and could have few complaints after the hosts grabbed that late winner to keep in the race for a play-off place.
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