Norwich v. Liverpool 2012

Norwich City vs Liverpool

	0 – 3
Date: 28/04/2012		Venue: Carrow Road
Attendance: 26,819		Referee: Mark Halsey

A match I’d been looking forward to all season finally came about on 28th April 2012, with the arrival of Liverpool at Carrow Road. It seems I wasn’t the only one looking forward to it, as it saw a new record all seater crowd at the stadium.

I have waited a long time to write this report as I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t being biased in my assessment. But the reality is, that I have seen every game this season at Carrow Road and only one other team absolutely dominated City the way Liverpool did, and that was Spurs. Man City may have scored 6, but in that game Norwich may well have got three or four themselves. They could have beaten Arsenal had they been more adventurous, and United only got their winner in the last minute. Newcastle got beat and Chelsea only drew.

But Liverpool were completely masterful – having 61% of possession and restricting Norwich to only two chances, and Reina only had to make one save. The passing and movement of this Liverpool side was immense, and a fantastic hattrick was scored by Suarez – who was barracked throughout. A lot of the Norwich sites were saying that the goals all came from defensive errors, which they did – but the reality is that Suarez still had a lot to do with all three goals, particularly the last one which was a 45 yard lob over Ruddy at the Barclay end.

Liverpool, in truth, could have had a lot more. They hit the crossbar, Downing had a rasping shot well saved, Shelvey somehow managed to miss whilst actually on the goal-line – possibly the worse miss of the season. Norwich were lacklustre and very well beaten indeed.