Rejuvenated Norwich no longer scared of the Farke

This time 12 months ago, to the week, Norwich City manager Daniel Farke was apparently facing a players’ revolt due to his uncompromising training methods and his so-called “brutal” double sessions.

According to reports, the dressing room was a maelstrom of resentment. Yet, if any side in the Championship can prove that nothing beats winning to quell discontent, than Norwich are surely the ones.

After this win at Blackburn, courtesy of Teemu Pukki finally finding the target with five minutes left, Norwich are top of the league and are just one victory off the number they managed in all of last season.

Farke’s methods and manners may remain as uncompromising today as they did this time last year, but nobody in the Norwich dressing room is complaining now.

“I trust my lads,” Farke said. “We have had to handle some difficult situations but I knew we could create something special. Blackburn tried to break our rhythm and to annoy us. We played our football and made it our game. It was a special win for us.

“Teemu scored a crucial goal. Sometimes strikers are always there with the fifth or sixth goal but he wants to score the first. But, to be honest, I’m not too interested in praising him too much – our fans will do that. I’m more interested in praising our entire group of players.” Farke, whom many expected to be fired after Norwich’s lacklustre start to the season, has forged a side containing both iron and imagination – and no team ever climb out of this division without demonstrating plenty of both.

Yesterday it was the iron that was required, on an afternoon that started sluggishly and never got going, as both sides refused to yield and referee Darren England refused to let the game flow. Every challenge, every niggle, every interaction between players of different coloured shirts was deemed an offence. If football is to entertain, it has to be allowed to breathe. England was a stranger to that concept.

As a result, this game, for the most part, was woeful. Pukki missed two good chances in the first half, latching on to intelligent through-balls from Todd Cantwell, but he did not do enough to slip them between the posts.

Blackburn were even worse, providing precious few moments of festive cheer for the paltry crowd, and with England remaining as whistle-happy after the break as before it, the match seemed destined to finish as it had begun.

teams do not top the Championship without being resilient and hungry, and Norwich seemed to will themselves toward the win late on, as Pukki ghosted in and converted substitute Onel Hernandez’s cross.

“I thought we played well and competed against a team at the top of the table,” Tony Mowbray, the Blackburn manager, said.

“We had the best chances to win the game but we knew they would have more possession. It was a game of fine margins but we came out of it at the wrong end. We’re frustrated and disappointed and we move on to the next game.”