Norwich City, a team that had been promoted to the Premier League (1st division soccer in England) from the English Championship (2nd division soccer in England) have just pulled off one of, if not the greatest upset in the Premier Leagues history. They have just won a regular season matchup at home against the reigning Premier League champions Manchester City by a scoreline of 3-2.
Now, time to put this result into context.
Going into this match, Manchester City held second place with 10 points, just behind Liverpool in first place with 15 points. This match, if City were to win, would have cut the gap to just two points (since a win is equivalent to three points, a draw is one point and a loss sums up to no points). Liverpool remain the only team in the Premier League to be undefeated (six wins, zero draws, zero losses) and their blistering start to the 2019/2020 season can only suggest that Liverpool can indeed go on to win the Premier League for the first time since 1990. This narrative only grows stronger when you have Manchester City, the only real threat to Liverpool at the moment, dropping points to Norwich City.
Going into this match, Norwich City held 18th place with just three points. The only victory Norwich had was against Newcastle when they beat them 3-1 thanks to their skipper, Teemu Pukki, netting all three of Norwich’s goals. By the way, Teemu Pukki joined Norwich last season on a free transfer, scored 29 goals for Norwich last season and now has six goals and two assists in the Premier League so far (the most goal contributions amongst all Premier League players). 18th place this early in the Premier League season is dangerous since 18th, 19th, and 20th place in the Premier League get relegated back down to the Championship. After this astounding result against arguably the best team in Europe, Norwich leapfrogged into 12th place and away from an early relegation battle.
But time for even more mind-boggling information to put this result into even more context.
Norwich, after scoring the first two goals of the game in a span of 10 minutes (18th and 28th minute), were able to go into halftime with a 2-1 advantage. This made Norwich the only team this season to hold a lead against Manchester City going into halftime. Norwich also marked the 20th consecutive home match where they scored a goal, disallowing the stout Manchester City defense to get to their attacking players. Manchester City allowing two goals in the first half was also historic, since that has only ever happened one other time under Pep Guardiola’s (Manchester City’s head coach) management back in December 2016 against Leicester City.
Norwich’s goalkeeper, Tim Krul, made his 250 appearance in English soccer during this match. He has before gone up against Manchester City on 11 separate occasions, and all matches had ended in defeat. Tim Krul, by the way, was one of ELEVEN players on Norwich’s injury list going into this match. In total, eight different Norwich players missed out on this match, including four of Norwich’s defensemen. This forced Daniel Farke, Norwich’s head coach, to stick midfielders in those center defensive positions.
Manchester City haven’t lost to a team that have been newly promoted from the Championship in the past 25 games. They held a 20 win, five draw and zero loss record up until this meeting with this resilient Norwich side. Manchester City’s last defeat to a newly promoted side was against Burnley back in March of 2015 when the final score was 1-0. Also, Manchester City have avoided defeat in the Premier League entirely ever since January. That’s an eight month undefeated streak broken by the newly promoted side.
Every stat available points towards this result holding still as one of the greatest upsets this league has ever seen. A draw for Norwich against Manchester City would have been enough for the home fans to dance the night away. But a victory against a team that not only was the favorites for the Premier League but are the favorites for every competitive tournament they are part of is legendary. Looking into the future, if history were to be made with Liverpool winning the Premier League for the first time in 30 years, this match will be looked at as the turning point in this seasons title race.
Manchester City, a team that have claimed the last two Premier League Championships, may have just been dethroned.
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