March 14th • 37/46 • 2-0 (W)
It was a sunny albeit chilly day at Carrow Road today, for the game against once high-flying Preston. At the start of January they were 4th in the league on 43 points, with us languishing in 22nd on 24. Coming into today, they'd only picked up 6 points since then with a tally of 49, a single point above us on 48, double our total in January, having picked up 4 times the points they did in the same period. Remember though, Liam Manning said nothing would change if he was sacked.
We were shooting the wrong way for the first time in a while and we spent the first 10 minutes mainly in our own half with a few chances for Preston, but we soon grew into the game. There was a penalty shout for Slimane but he got booked for simulation - correctly, in fairness. He made up for it with a nice flick onto Kvistgaarden who broke forward and fired off a strong shot that was punched back out into the path of Ahmed to slot home after 17 minutes. Side note, but I love how passionate Kvistgaarden always is despite his limited minutes this season, and I hope he has a longer term future at the club still. He had another lovely touch to try and get the second of the day but the finish wasn't there. Kvistgaarden and Mattsson both went down for a foul, with Ahmed and McLean standing over the resulting free kick - we all knew who was going to take it though, and how glad we were he did, as Kenny curled a tidy shot top bins to send the crowd wild. Preston were pretty lethargic and we were well on top, we even had Liam Gibbs hitting the bar with a sweet strike, much to the amusement of the guy that sits next to me, who hates Liam Gibbs with a passion.
The second half was a bit less intensive - maybe it's not our second halves that are better, just whenever we shoot towards the Barclay. Either way, the game was won in the first half. Preston had some chances but weren't able to finish any of them.
That's another 3 points, and we're up to 12th (yes, top half) on 51 points. That's safety all but assured. Last season we finished 13th on 57, and we are absolutely on course to beat that tally with nine games still to go, which is frankly astonishing given the start to the season, which feels like a distant nightmare at this point. Give Big Phil Clement whatever he wants for next season, and we'll go up as champions.