NCFC 25/26 • Coventry (A)

Look at me, going to away days and shit! The first of several planned for this season. First up, none other than Frank Lampard's Coventry City™ (if you don't mention Frank Lampard when referencing the team, is he even their manager?).

I was at the home game last season where Norwich came from 1-0 down to win 2-1 in stoppage time, so I was looking forward to getting one over on them again. Having recently won 5-3 and 7-1 however, that may have taken some doing. Coming into today, Norwich had lost all three home games and won all three away games this season (two in the league and one in the league cup apiece). So, which streak would end first - me not seeing a W, or the away winning run? Sadly, it was the latter.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. As this was an away day I had the pleasure of the journey across to Coventry to contend with, which started off great as I couldn't even get onto the A11 due to someone somehow rolling their car at the junction with the A47. After a slow diversion and lots of swearing from me, the rest of the drive was uneventful. I went to my seat very early as there wasn't enough time to get over to the retail park for some food (which was further away than it looked on the map), and I had a pretty good view up in the nosebleed seats.

Fittingly for being at the home of the Sky Blues, the weather started with clear blue sky but slowly turned to miserable rain, and Norwich's performance echoed the conditions. Coventry hit the post, and I thought Darling had turned the ball into his own net before thankfully seeing the linesman's flag.

As the clouds cleared and a rainbow formed outside the stadium, the play improved somewhat. Sargent's goalscoring streak may have come to an end, but Kvistgaarden got his first goal in yellow on 17 minutes, and treated us to his customary backflip celebration (which annoyingly isn't included in even the extended highlights reel from Norwich City or the EFL, but was in the TV broadcast).

Most of the rest of the game felt fairly scrappy. Coventry had most of the ball but kept giving it away clumsily, but we kept not doing anything with it when we had it. A few chances here and there, but it felt more like we just had to see it out. Kvistgaarden pulled up in front of us with what looked like his hamstring, but tried to run it off before going down again, which prompted jeers from the Coventry fans. To be fair, we had been engaging in a fair amount of time wasting. I saw somewhere there were over 100 stoppages in the game, and it felt like it, with several of our players going down - the physio team definitely earned their pay at least.

So much so, that the ref somehow found nine (9) minutes of added time at the end of the second half, which prompted confusion among everyone in earshot, and I had to confirm with the lady standing next to me. Although now that I know there were 100+ stoppages, I guess it makes sense. It was Coventry's time wasting that gave Norwich the time to score two against them in the dying minutes last season, and I had a sinking feeling they were going to give us a taste of our own medicine. Sure enough, they equalised in the 95th minute. I'm not sure we exactly deserved a win, given their 28 shots to our 4 and 65% possession to our 35%, but to be so close only to lose it was somewhat of a gut punch.

And that was that. After sitting in the car park for a while waiting for them to let cars out (the stadium empties out onto main roads so it's all closed off until pedestrian traffic is minimal) and then the standard pushing and shoving to get into the queue, it was a smooth drive back. I actually followed a guy in a Hyundai i30 N for about 100 miles, from not long after I joined the M6 right up to the first roundabout after the war memorial on the A11 (we were sat on the same cruise control speed the whole way but he didn't take the roundabouts with the same verve as I do so I passed him and went on my way at that point).

Next up is Wrexham at home in a week's time, who I really hope we beat. We can't be losing to fucking Deadpool's team...