Norwich 1-2 Wolves: Raul Jimenez punishes Canaries with late winner

Report and free highlights as Jimenez and Romain Saiss overturn Todd Cantwell's opener at Carrow Road

Ron Walker

Digital Football Journalist @Ronnabe

Sunday 22 December 2019 12:57, UK

Raul Jimenez took advantage of Norwich's profligacy to score a late winner for Wolves in a 2-1 victory at Carrow Road.

Todd Cantwell gave Norwich a half-time lead with a powerful strike following Jonny's mistake, but the Canaries should have led by more with Wolves significantly below-par.

The second half proved a more balanced affair and Wolves pulled themselves level on the hour mark when Joao Moutinho's corner was headed in by Romain Saiss.

Norwich's hopes of moving closer to survival were then dealt a further blow in the final 10 minutes when Jimenez fired in the rebound from Matt Doherty's effort as the Canaries threw away a home lead for the second game in a row.

How Wolves' resilience won the day

The form book suggested Wolves would have a relatively easy ride against Norwich's porous defence at Carrow Road, but the Canaries' fans have never bowed to expectation and were in fine spirits ahead of kick-off - but even better once play got underway.

Wolves had only one touch in the home box inside the opening 15 minutes, with Norwich instead taking full advantage of their bright start. Kenny McLean's low cross was behind Teemu Pukki but an awful attempted clearance from Jonny was the perfect tee-up for Cantwell, who blasted the gift of a chance into the top corner.

Nuno Espirito Santo's side, beaten only three times beforehand during the season, coughed and spluttered and their quality shone through occasionally, but only a darting run and shot from Jimenez ever came close to testing Tim Krul.

At the other end, Norwich spurned the kind of chances they could not afford to miss, given their defensive record this season, with Pukki twice denied by Rui Patricio when well-placed, while Tettey struck the post out of nowhere from 25 yards courtesy of a wonderful fingertip stop from the Portugual goalkeeper.

Huge cheers greeted the half-time whistle but there must have been a tinge of concern among the home support Norwich had not taken full advantage of their first-half dominance, and those worries came to fruition 15 minutes after the restart.

Wolves were by no means dominating by this point, but levelled when Moutinho, whose deliveries had been poor all evening, floated a fine cross to the back post from a corner where Saiss headed back across goal to beat Krul.

Still Norwich refused to go down without a fight but found life harder against a resurgent Wolves side, and were nearly caught out in their own box when Grant Hanley was robbed by Jimenez, who then blasted over from a good position.

The Mexico forward would put that miss behind him to complete the turnaround seven minutes from time with an assured finish, once Doherty's shot from Pedro Neto's low cross had been diverted into his path.

Norwich could have moved level with 18th-placed Aston Villa with victory, but have instead dropped six points adrift of safety after Southampton's win at Villa Park. Wolves move up to sixth, above both Tottenham and Manchester United, but both sides can return above them if they win on Sunday.

What the managers said...

Norwich manager Daniel Farke: "Football can be the most unfair sport in the world. In most other sports like tennis, the player with more points wins the match, basketball, but football is always decided by one or two goals, so you can lose the game when you deserve to win.

"It's not always fair, you have to grab your own fair reward and we couldn't do that today. We missed too many chances. We played against a side against a decent position. You can't control 90 minutes, but for most of the game we were on the front foot."

Wolves head coach Nuno Espirito Santo: "We told the players at half-time to avoid a repeat of the first half - it was not good! Norwich are a good teams with the lines that they have, the way they move the ball. It was always vertical, caused us a lot of problems, but we lost a lot of balls in the middle. I asked them to try to be better, and they did it.

"The second half was very good. We controlled, we pressed, even in their area we won the ball back, and I'm happy with the reaction and the bounceback because we learned from our mistakes. That's the growing of the team."

Man of the match - Rui Patricio

There were few stand-out performances in the proverbial game of two halves at Carrow Road, but Patricio's touch to turn Tettey's effort onto the woodwork, and twice save from Pukki before the break, probably won the game for the visitors.

Had they fallen two or more goals behind it would have been a long way back for Nuno's team, but his goalkeeper's heroics provided a base to build on after half-time in a near-faultless performance.

Opta facts

Norwich have failed to keep a clean sheet in 13 Premier League home games, their longest ever such run in the competition.
Wolves have conceded the first goal in a Premier League game on 11 occasions this season - the joint-most along with Arsenal; Wolves only went on to lose three of those games.
Since the beginning of last season, Wolves' Joao Moutinho has assisted eight Premier League goals from corner situations, at least two more than any other player
Emiliano Buendía created nine chances in this match, seven of which came in the first half. The last Norwich player to create as many in a league game was Nathan Redmond, who set up nine chances in a Championship tie against Birmingham in September 2014.