Norwich City vs Sheffield Wednesday. Sky Bet Championship.
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Report and free match highlights from the Sky Bet Championship match between Norwich City and Sheffield Wednesday at Carrow Road on Wednesday | Borja Sainz, Ashley Barnes and Jon Rowe seal fourth win in six for Canaries
Wednesday 13 December 2023 23:13, UK
Norwich warmed up for Saturday's East Anglian derby at high-flying Ipswich by beating Sheffield Wednesday 3-1 at Carrow Road to make it four wins in their last six Championship games.
An early wonder-strike on his full debut from Borja Sainz set the Canaries on their way and they responded impressively in the second half after being pegged back by Bailey Cadamarteri's 32nd-minute header.
Ashley Barnes restored City's lead three minutes into the second half and Jonathan Rowe's back-post header - his ninth goal of a productive campaign - settled the issue after 72 minutes.
The win keeps Norwich on the fringes of the play-off race, while for the relegation-threatened Owls it brought an end to an encouraging run of seven points from a possible nine.
Norwich made a dream start, with Sainz firing them in front with a glorious goal after just seven minutes.
The Spanish winger left a couple of Wednesday defenders in his wake after cutting in from the left before letting fly with a rising drive from the edge of the box that flew past goalkeeper Cameron Dawson and into the roof of the net.
That magic moment set the scene for an entertaining first half, with both sides having plenty of chances.
It needed a superb save from Angus Gunn to keep out Michael Ihiekwe's close-range header, while at the other end Barnes struck the woodwork with a powerful shot when he had the goal at his mercy.
That miss was to prove costly, with the visitors getting back on level terms three minutes later from a Will Vaulks long throw.
His delivery was nodded on by Ihiekwe and Cadamarteri was on hand at the back post to head home his second senior goal for the Owls.
Barnes missed another good opportunity before the break, lofting the ball over with just Dawson to beat, while the Wednesday stopper needed to be alert to collect a downward header from Adam Idah deep into stoppage time.
Norwich were quick out of the blocks in the second half as well, regaining the lead in the 48th minute as Barnes finally found the target.
An incisive pass from Gabriel Sara found Sainz in space on the left and this time the Spaniard sent in a perfect low cross for the former Burnley striker to slide home from close range.
Callum Patterson fired into the side-netting as the visitors sought an immediate response, but Norwich were largely untroubled and made it 3-1 with 18 minutes remaining.
A left-wing cross to the back post from Dimi Giannoulis was completely misjudged by the visitors' defence, allowing an unmarked Rowe the straightforward task of nodding home from a few yards.
Norwich's David Wagner:
"Four days ago I spoke about how frustrated I was about not taking our chances, so to put things right at the very first opportunity is very pleasing and just the way it should be. We scored three wonderful goals, created a lot of other opportunities and also defended well, even though their set pieces caused us one or two problems. We scored a great goal early on and could have had more but we didn't make it easy for ourselves and conceded an equaliser.
"It is always pleasing in those circumstances when you then go on and win the game. We responded well to the setback, kept our tempo, kept believing and got the result we deserved. We have done well in our last six games, and also did well in the first six games of the season. In between could have been better but now we must keep this going, making sure our performances are at a consistent level. We now have a big derby game (at Ipswich) and everyone is really looking forward to that."
Sheffield Wednesday's Danny Rohl:
"I am okay with my players after that, even though I am obviously disappointed with the result. Now we must recover and be ready to go again on Saturday when we have another big game (at home to fellow strugglers QPR). In each half we had early goals to deal with and that didn't help us, especially in the second half when we had just changed things.
"I thought we did a lot of things very well, although our pressing wasn't sharp enough and at times our positioning wasn't good enough. We tried everything but in the end it wasn't enough and our opponents were better in the box and deserved the win."
