Norwich catch City sleeping
Newly-promoted club stun defending champs Man City
Norwich, Sept. 15: Newly-promoted Norwich stunned Manchester City 3-2 at Carrow Road on Saturday to inflict a first Premier League defeat on the English champions since January.
Kenny McLean, Todd Cantwell and the prolific Teemu Pukki took advantage of a ragged City defence without the injured Aymeric Laporte for a remarkable upset despite Sergio Aguero and Rodri pulling goals back for the visitors.
Defeat for City sees Pep Guardiola’s men already fall five points behind European champions Liverpool — who have a perfect record from their first five games — in the title race. “We are absolutely delighted, it is a great day for us, for the whole club and for the supporters,” said Norwich manager Daniel Farke, who had to name two goalkeepers on his substitute bench just to make up the numbers due to an injury crisis.
“I can’t praise enough the spirit and mentality of my players because it was an unbelievably complicated week.
“We worked on a different approach because we thought we have to change a bit our base formation for this game, but after all these injuries, we turned back because I didn’t want to annoy the lads too much or confuse them.”
City’s decision not to strengthen at centre-back over the summer despite former captain Vincent Kompany’s departure to become playermanager at Anderlecht could cost Guardiola’s side the title with Laporte sidelined by a serious knee injury until at least January.
“We have to learn from this and carry on,” said Guardiola.
“We did not have urgency in the final third that we normally have. In football you can’t always avoid mistakes.
“I don’t know how many shots we had or how many they had, but football is about goals and about what you do in the boxes.”