Norwich City survived a stern test of their character at the hands of Millwall at the Den to return to the top of the Sky Bet Championship table.
This was always going to be a tough game against the relegation threatened Lions, who seemingly like to turn every match into a scrap. They are strong physically and have an impressive aerial prowess, although it’s testament to the way that Norwich played in the second half that, despite ending the game with three strikers on the pitch, they had just scraps to feed off in the air as Norwich restricted their crossing opportunities.
Tim Krul had a very good game as he denied Jake Cooper and Steve Morison early on and later, the travelling 3,200 canary fans had the big Dutchman to thank again when he made a superb double save in the last ten minutes with the score at 3-1.
Norwich took the lead on 16 minutes when Emi Buendia’s flick put Onel Hernandez through only for the City winger’s shot to be saved by Lions’ keeper, Jordan Archer but the rebound was smashed home by Marco Stiepermann “who was there with a clinical performance.”
Teemu Pukki had the chance to grab a second late on in the first half but fired straight at Archer when Stiepermann was well placed. That miss was costly though as Shaun Williams headed home Morison’s flick moments later, to level things up at the break.
The second half saw Norwich have to dig in and fight against a determined home side, who lacked the quality though to really hurt them.
Eventually, on 69 minutes, Christoph Zimmermann beat Millwall at their own game as he scored from a Buendia corner. Ten minutes later and the points were sealed when Buendia sent Pukki away.
The Finn scored his 25th league goal of the season when he burst through the middle of the two Millwall centre backs and fired past Archer.
Three goals and three points on the road. A grand day out, I’d say.
OTBC
The New Den
Sky Bet Championship
2/03/2019 4:00 pm
Referee: David Webb
| Millwall | Norwich City | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Williams 44’ | Stiepermann 16’, Zimmermann 69’, Pukki 79’ | ||||||
| Archer | Krul | ||||||
| Romeo | Aarons | ||||||
| Hutchinson | Zimmermann (c) | ||||||
| Cooper | Godfrey | ||||||
| Meredith | 74’ | Lewis | 88’ | ||||
| Wallace | Trybull | ||||||
| Thompson | McLean | ||||||
| Williams | 84’ | Hernández | 87’ | ||||
| Ferguson | Buendia | 85’ | |||||
| Gregory | Stiepermann | ||||||
| Morison (c) | Pukki | ||||||
Substitutes |
|||||||
| Tunnicliffe | Oxborough | ||||||
| Onyedinma | Vrancic | 87’ | |||||
| Pearce | Rhodes | ||||||
| Martin | Leitner | 85’ | |||||
| Elliott | 84’ | Hanley | |||||
| O’Brien | 74’ | Klose | 88’ | ||||
| Leonard | Tettey | ||||||
Game Statistics |
||
| 17 | Goal attempts | 11 |
| 8 | On Target | 7 |
| 8 | Corners | 6 |
| 11 | Fouls | 11 |
| 2 | Yellow Cards | 0 |
| 0 | Red Cards | 0 |
| 41 | % | 59 |