PL25: Norwich triumph in a relegation thriller made unimportant by real life

To celebrate 25 years of the Premier League each week in Football Fancast we’re going to be looking back at a memorable game that took place on the corresponding date. This time out we revisit a must-win clash for two sides desperate to avoid the drop.

The vernacular used for relegation battles can err towards the dramatic, suggesting that for the clubs involved it is a matter of life and death. Two years ago, ahead of a rip-roaring bottom four encounter between Norwich City and Newcastle United, the Canaries striker Dieumerci Mbokani presumably had little time for such hyperbole.

Ten days prior to the game at Carrow Road, that if not a draw threatened to root the away side firmly in the mire or else drag the East Anglian club back into danger, the Congolese frontman was due to fly from Brussels Airport when three co-ordinated suicide bombings occurred that killed 32 civilians. It can only be imagined what witnessing such atrocities at close quarters does to the mind and senses. For some the shock is hard and immediate. For others it waits, insidiously.

With club football on an international break it was an obvious decision to allow Mbokani to return home to be with his family though with such a decent institution as Norwich we can assume a period of convalescence would have been afforded him anyway. But now there was Newcastle to deal with, revived under the very recent appointment of Rafa Benitez. Now there was the inconsequential footballing matter of life and death to contend with. With relegation a very real concern Alex Neil needed his top scorer back.

The 30-year-old was this game’s man of the match; that should be stated from the top. Whether he dug into reserves or temporarily buried his nightmares deep down for 90 minutes, whatever it took to produce a formidable performance that’s what Mbokani did and he bullied throughout a back two of Chancel Mbemba and Steven Taylor, a duo not usually given to ceding ground. With Naismith and Brady scheming and scurrying around him the visitors had their hands full and ultimately it was this that proved to be the difference in an otherwise ding-dong affair driven by desperation on both sides.

The first half was frantic in keeping with what was at stake. Benitez must have hated that. All that pragmatic preparation; all that calm, analytical insight imparted to his new players, only to result in this high-octane chaos. Real Madrid must have seemed like an awfully long time ago. Chances were at a premium and when they arose they were snatched at and squandered. Tackles were tasty.

With the whistle in the referee’s lips Norwich centre-back Timm Klose headed home from a set-piece in first half stoppage time. Benitez would have really hated that.

The second period resumed with the same intensity only now it was broken up by spells of steady, probing passing from the visitors and from one such passage of play a cross was floated over by Andros Townsend and Aleksandar Mitrovic guided it past the flailing arm of John Ruddy. Had this encounter taken place in autumn a draw could now be assumed with both sides content with a point. Not today though. Today a draw was no good to either of them.

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Three minutes later, Mbokani took possession out wide on the left and cut in with real purpose. He wrong-footed Janmaat with ease and fired home a rocket with so much meaning behind it that you suspect Karl Darlow was diving out of its way for self-preservation. It was an exocet. It was an exorcism of grief.

Neatly that would have been that but there is rarely anything neat about relegation fights and with just minutes remaining a stray Norwich hand in the box was spotted by the official and a penalty was awarded. Mitrovic converted as if nothing was easier.

2-2 it stayed until the 93rd minute, so late in fact that even a game with so much riding on it was in danger of petering out. Then from nowhere Martin Olsen retrieved a loose ball and blasted it back among legs and bodies, blinding the keeper of its whereabouts until it thudded in off the post. Norwich had snatched it at the last and in that moment as the crowd went crazy and the players ran off their jubilation in every direction it must have felt like that had saved themselves from a fate worse than…..well, let’s not succumb to hyperbole.

What happened next?

Benitez’s shrewd guidance began to have a real effect as Newcastle put together a decent run toward the season’s end. Sadly it was not enough to ward off the drop.

Norwich also fell that season, managing just a solitary further win from their remaining six games.