Most of the fans who watched last night’s visit to Norwich City would accept that a draw was a fair result after an even contest, and Daniel Farke was happy to take a point from a difficult away game against one of the better teams in the division.
Our manager told BBC Sport "Definitely a good point on the road. I think overall it was a good advertisement for the Championship - a tight game and obviously in these tight games decisive moments are always crucial. Norwich is a good side, they have an unbeaten record here at home during the season. You could feel two in-form teams were today on the pitch."
After the disappointing news that Ampadu will now be out until Christmas Farke had one enforced change to make, so Tanaka came in to replace him. I’ve read elsewhere that this meant that for the first time in our history we started a game with players from eleven different countries. Provided Wales counts as a separate country, and I won’t upset anyone by saying it doesn’t.
The multi-nationals made a good start to the game, but went behind after 15 minutes, after Sargent was played in behind our defence and our Welsh representative slid in to challenge him. Rodon kept on sliding on the wet surface, which unfortunately meant that he caught Sargent’s foot as the Norwich man cut back inside.
At that point Gruev went down injured, which at least caused a delay which Sargent wouldn’t have wanted. Several Leeds players took the opportunity to say something to Meslier, so perhaps at least one told him to just stand there, as Sargent always bangs it down the middle. And I thought for a second he had, but in fact it was just far to our keepers, and Meslier moved too late to reach it.
Gruev had to be replaced soon after, which now gives a problem if he can’t recover soon, as we’re running out of defensive midfielders. Rothwell came on and AO dropped into a deeper role than he would have liked, but he got on with the job and covered a lot of ground for the cause, while we continued to enjoy a lot of the possession.
The only trouble was that we didn’t do much with it for the rest of the first half, apart from a shot from Gnonto after the Italian had moved past several defenders in a crowded box, which came back off the post after seeming to catch Gunn by surprise. And the second half began with more of the same.
The Norwich team were working hard, and the way they got defenders back in numbers each time we attacked was almost Bielsa-like. And they couldn’t be accused of playing football in a library, as the home fans were creating quite an atmosphere in their compact stadium. It was starting to resemble one of those frustrating away games of last season when for all our possession we couldn’t equalise after going behind.
Rothwell produced a fierce shot when the ball came back to him outside the area, and would have scored if he’d sent it into the corner, but he sent it too close to Gunn. And at the other end Doyle sent a header just over the bar from a corner. But just as it looked like we weren’t going to get in behind the massed ranks of the home defence, we grabbed the equaliser on the hour.
Gnonto went past a couple of defenders and played in Ramazani on the left, with the Belgian drilling the ball into the far corner. After that it looked like Norwich were beginning to flag and we were the more likely to go on and win the game. We had a shout for a penalty with Gnonto seemingly caught on the edge of the area, though Aaronson should have made that academic as the ball ran through to him instead of blazing over the bar.
With 20 minutes left Farke decided his best option to grab the win was to send Bamford and Piroe into the fray. A good idea in theory with their goal-scoring records, but many on social media have criticised the move, saying all it did was to slow us up, though others said that Farke can’t win, as the usual comment is that he makes his subs too late.
Bamford’s main contribution was to get into a row with Sargent, perhaps arguing over whether Leeds should have signed Sargent as Bamford’s replacement, which some fans advocated over the summer. The momentum seemed to swing back in Norwich’s favour for the closing stages, though we did have a shot over the bar from Bogle just over the bar.
Despite a couple more changes, including a rare appearance for the lesser-spotted Gelhardt, we had to settle for the draw, which we might have taken before the match kicked off. It took us up to fourth for one night only, though Sheffield United’s win tonight put us back down to fifth. And so our battered squad moves on to another tricky away game on Friday night, from which our manager might also be happy to take a draw.