Norwich City took another huge stride towards the Premier League as they beat Middlesbrough on Saturday evening at the Riverside Stadium.
Daniel Farke named an unchanged team for the seventh game in a row, the first time that’s happened since 1991. This win made it seven wins in a row, on the day that Sheffield United finally faltered losing 3-2 at home to Bristol City.
That pair of results means that the Canaries now have a seven point gap over the third placed Blades – it seems that it’s all about the power of seven!
The first half saw Middlesbrough first out of the blocks as they took the game to Norwich, although the best chances of the half fell to City with Darren Randolph twice foiling Teemu Pukki with excellent saves.
The second half saw the real Norwich City apply themselves and they took the lead on 54 minutes when Onel Hernandez was allowed to run across the Boro box before striking a powerful low shot into the bottom left hand corner of Randolph’s goal.
The home side had struck the post with a Daniel Ayala header just moments before and later on, Christoph Zimmermann hooked a goal bound effort from Stewart Downing off the line.
This was a massive win and means that promotion is now firmly in our hands. I reckon that three more wins will be enough to do that. With QPR, Reading and Wigan our next three and the next two games being at home, the chance is theirs for the taking.
OTBC
Riverside Stadium
Sky Bet Championship
30/03/2019 6:30 pm
Attendance: 23795
Referee: D. Coote
| Middlesbrough | Norwich City | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hernandez 54' | |||||||
| Randolph | Krul | ||||||
| Ayala | 60' | Aarons | |||||
| Flint | Zimmermann (c) | ||||||
| Fry | Godfrey | ||||||
| Shotton | 87' | Lewis | |||||
| Clayton | 72' | Trybull | |||||
| Mikel | McLean | ||||||
| Friend (c) | Buendia | ||||||
| Fletcher | Stiepermann | 84' | |||||
| Howson | Hernandez | 94' | |||||
| Assombalonga | Pukki | ||||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Konstantopoulos | McGovern | ||||||
| Hugill | 87' | Vrancic | 84' | ||||
| McNair | Leitner | ||||||
| Downing | 60' | Rhodes | |||||
| Savile | Hanley | ||||||
| Tavernier | Klose | 94' | |||||
| Besic | 72' | Cantwell | |||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 17 | Goal attempts | 16 |
| 6 | On Target | 5 |
| 4 | Corners | 6 |
| 17 | Fouls | 9 |
| 3 | Yellow Cards | 4 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 40 | % | 60 |