Norwich City 2 Middlesbrough 0
They played like a team that was in a hurry to get back to the Premier League. Norwich City had dismantled the most parsimonious defence in the Championship inside the opening quarter of an hour. The goals came in a three-minute blitz and at the final whistle it was the yellow end, rather than Middlesbrough's banks of red, where the euphoria could be found.
Alex Neil’s team started brilliantly and the damage for Middlesbrough was grievous bearing mind the last time they overturned a 2-0 deficit was all the way back in 2006, when Steve McClaren was the manager, Mark Viduka was in attack and the opposition was Steaua Bucharest in a Uefa Cup semi-final. The modern-day team did rally briefly in the second half but there were only fleeting moments when they threatened to get back on terms and Norwich’s return to the top division is ultimately their reward for having the foresight to appoint Neil from Hamilton Academicals when they needed a new manager in January.
Neil comes from Bellshill, the same town in north Lanarkshire where Matt Busby grew up, and is a reminder of Scotland’s prolific production line after a season in which Paul Lambert’s sacking at Aston Villa has left England’s top division without any managers from north of the border. At 33, Neil will also be one of the youngest managers of the Premier League era and there is plenty to admire judging by the way his team established a position of command in the first half then ensured the second 45 minutes was relatively stress-free.
For Middlesbrough, it was a jarring way to end a season when their defence has been so instrumental to their progress. They will wonder whether might have been different if Jelle Vossen after nine minutes had not clanged off the crossbar but Bradley Johnson had done the same for Norwich barely 30 seconds earlier and the bottom line is that Aitor Karanka’s side chose a bad day to lose their qualities of structure and organisation. Nobody watching this game could have imagined this was a team that had accumulated 22 clean sheets this season.
That three-minute spell early on was devastating and a personal ordeal in particular for Daniel Ayala, a former Norwich player, bearing in mind his dithering on the ball that led to the first goal. Jerome robbed him and advanced towards goal, probably expecting at least one opponent would come across to block off the shot. It never happened. The next defender in line, Ben Gibson, was too occupied with who might be lurking behind him and the goalkeeper, Dimitrios Konstantopoulos, also seemed to be caught in two minds. Jerome weighed up his options and had all the time he wanted to turn his shot inside the near post.
As the Norwich players went to congratulate Jerome, those in red could be seen gathering around Ayala to try to lift the defender’s spirits. Yet it was not just Ayala who dissolved in those stages. Norwich’s domination could be neatly encapsulated in the moment when Wes Hoolahan slipped the ball through the legs of Grant Leadbitter and it was a lovely sequence of crisp passes that culminated in Steven Whittaker playing in Nathan Redmond for the second goal. Redmond’s first touch took him away from Gibson and provide the angle for him to take aim. The second was fired into the bottom corner and the late onslaught that might have been expected of Middlesbrough never really materialised.
Guardian Service
