A lot of people are probably not aware that there has been a long-standing rivalry between Norwich City and Wolves, one of our chants is “we only hate Wolves and Ipswich”. The rivalry goes back to the days when the infamous Kevin Muscat seriously injured Craig Bellamy who was our star player at the time and an intimidating encounter when we beat Wolves in the play-off knock out stage in 2002 despite losing 1-0 in the second leg at Molineux. In that year Norwich just scraped 6th place on the last day of the Championship season whereas Wolves finished 9 points clear of 4th placed Milwall, so it was a bitter defeat for Wolves to swallow.
A lot has happened in the 9 years since this encounter and Wolves went in to this game fighting for their survival in the Premier League and Norwich looking to pick up a win after recent bad form and without a win since 11th February.
As we have all come to expect Lambert tinkered with the team again playing a 3-5-2 line-up. The back 3 was a surprise for me with Naughton being dropped, he has been superb for is this season but Lambert’s tactics seemed to be to try to get a few goals. I don’t think this came off, we were a little shaky at the back with Ward making a few unforced errors and when Matt Jarvis scored on 25 minutes I had to admit that I though it was going to be one of those days as despite us having dominated possession we were struggling to get any real chances on goal. After half time however Naughton replaced Lappin (who I thought had a superb 1st half) and the structure seemed to suit us better.
Next Page: Opta Stats from the game…
