Canaries’ wings are clipped
BIRMINGHAM ended a nine-match winless streak at home with a crushing defeat of Norwich, but manager Gary Rowett is refusing to get carried away.
Clayton Donaldson struck twice in the second half after David Davis gave the Blues a half-time lead to secure a second win of the season.
But Rowett insisted there is plenty of work ahead despite what he believed was one of the best performances of his time in charge.
“We played with some really good quality at times,” he said. “You go into the international break certainly a lot happier.
“We’ll give them a little bit of time off but not too much – it’s only one really good performance, not five or six on the spin. We’ve got to make sure we back that up.
“We started the game really consciously on the front foot – I think we’ve allowed other teams to make the running in previous games but we wanted to make something happen. We have had moments like this before without a win, but we have not lost that many either. It’s a hellishly tough league and you have to be at your very best every week. ”
Davis headed the Blues in front on 22 minutes, meeting Jacques Maghoma’s rightfooted, in-swinging cross at the back post after some slack Norwich marking.
Maghoma nearly doubled the lead from a 25-yard free-kick on the stroke of half-time, after Donaldson had been tripped, but his fierce strike did not quite dip enough.
It was one-way traffic after the break though, with Maghoma dragging a shot wide from the edge of the area on 58 minutes.
Che Adams went even closer on the hour, racing onto a threaded through ball and rounding Michael McGovern, but he could only shoot into the side-netting from a tight angle. A second Birmingham goal should have arrived on 65 minutes but Robert Tesche – from Donaldson’s inch-perfect cross – somehow hit the underside of the bar with what should have been a tap-in.
They did not rue the miss though – just three minutes later Steven Whittaker scythed down Donaldson in the area, and the striker picked himself up to coolly place his penalty down the middle to double the lead.
Norwich briefly came back alive in the final 20 minutes, and Birmingham had Maghoma to thank for keeping Jacob Murphy’s shot out on 72 minutes when Tomasz Kuszczak missed a cross.
But Donaldson sealed victory on 83 minutes, racing on to Alex Tettey’s loose backpass to lift over the onrushing McGovern and double his tally.
And angry Norwich boss Alex Neil said: “It’s easy to look for a scapegoat but we, as a collective, have to look at how we went about the game because it wasn’t good enough.
“It was extremely frustrating to say the least. If you don’t do the basics right, then it’s going to be difficult.
“The first goal was a header at the back post we should have done better with; the second we gave a complete unnecessary penalty away; and the third is another loose pass from us which, to be honest, was a common theme.
“I thought we lost the game, rather than Birmingham carving us open and beating us. We’ve been the makers of our own downfall.”