It is almost official.
Norwich is going back to Championship with Bournemouth on their side. Today's thumping defeat against Arsenal may have been expected by neutral fans but not by the NCFC fans. That is how I felt, atleast. The Arsenal team, Auba and Tim Krull helped the flood gate to open and sweep any chances Norwich had.
Arsenal scored 4 goals and all sorts of records were broken today, sadly. Auba to be the fastest Arsenal player to score 50 premier league goals and Cedric to score his first goal in the premier league, his debut goal in fact.
Before the start of the game, I thought we had an ample opportunity to save the grace by playing cool and composite game and salvage a draw out of this fixture. It did not pan out like that.
Norwich managed to hold Arsenal and created some half chances in the first 25 minutes. It was goalless until the first drink break despite the fact that Tim Krull had to make some spectacular saves to deny Auba and Lacazette. And then the unthinkable happened. The experienced custodian, Krull, made a grave mistake out of cautious /overconfidence. He decided to play pingpong with Auba and he punished Krull instantly. Everything was going right until then. No goals were scored.
Norwich never looked like a team to score. Instead a brilliant assist from Auba to Xhaka made it 2-0 before the halftime. Almost everyone knew that the game was over as Norwich has never ever made a comeback win from a losing position in this premier league season. They were not gonna change that today.
Pretty much a standard script after that where Auba made it 3-0 for the home side and Cedric managed to score a cracking goal from 20 yards in his debut match. Arteta replaced Auba and deny him scoring a hat-trick goal.
"I'm really happy today. My performance was good. And I'm always happy to score goals and help the team to win games." Auba
What does this mean to the relegation battle?
This means, it is not technically official, the yellow army may have to cheer for their team to rally back to the premier league again in the next championship season. Norwich is six points behind Bournemouth and Aston Villa.
Norwich is playing Brighton next and if they managed to win that match and if West Ham happened to lose their next game then there will be a slight opening for three teams battling relegation. But, it is likely that West Ham will be on war with Aston Villa and Bournemouth.
Let's get prepared to have a proper send off to Norwich FC.