Debutant Norwood on the harsh defeat at Cardiff
Oliver Norwood believes that Town showed they can match anyone in the npower Championship during tonight’s cruel 1-0 defeat at much-fancied Cardiff City.
The Terriers performed very well throughout the 90 minutes, only for an added time strike from Bluebirds skipper Mark Hudson robbing Town of a more than deserved share of the spoils.
“That’s football isn’t it?” the Northern Ireland international told htafc.com.
“We came here with a plan and we stuck to it – we kept our team shape. The pre-season friendly against Barcelona B stood us in good stead for this in terms of keeping our shape and working from the shape.
“We’ve had to put that work in; they are the basics of football. You have to get close to people and play when you get the ball and I think we showed tonight that when we have it, we can.
“The Gaffer has brought the squad together and the lads here are more than capable of playing at this level. We showed tonight that we are a match for anybody in this League because Cardiff are going to be up there; we believe we can be up there ourselves.
“That is the standard we have set ourselves and that is where we want to keep them throughout the season now. We’re disappointed, but we’ve got to keep believing in ourselves – you’d like to think that if we play like that we will win more than we lose.
“We need to put some chances away and score some goals, but it was a harsh lesson at the end.”
Norwood went close to opening the scoring for Town on two occasions in the first half, only to be thwarted by home goalkeeper David Marshall.
“I thought he should have caught the first one, but on the second one I thought I’d done him! It was a good save and he went on to get ‘Man of the Match’, which just shows how well we played.
“I scored a few goals coming through the Manchester United Academy and I’ve scored in all my loans, so I want to add that to my game. I’m working hard at that in training and hopefully I can chip in with a few goals this year.”
Despite the result, the former Manchester United trainee believes there is a lot to build on ahead of Tuesday night’s home clash with Nottingham Forest.
“The lads are really down and disappointed in the changing room, but the great thing about football is that we can bounce back on Tuesday.
“We’re a confident bunch of lads. The momentum that lads from last year have brought due to promotion means there is a real buzz around the training ground. I think you can see that from the way we’ve gone about our business tonight and we’ll put this behind us now. We’ll take the positives, work on the negatives and bounce into Tuesday night.
“Every game is tough in this division – there are no easy games. I know that from playing for Coventry from 20 games last season. We’ve got some very good players in the dressing room though.”
The 21 year-old is looking forward to his debut in front of the home fans against Nottingham Forest on Tuesday evening; 7.45pm kick-off.
“That’s why you sign for a football club. I’ve seen how excited the fans get and you could see it tonight; albeit it was a smaller number, at times they out sang the Cardiff lot! We have a great set of enthusiastic fans and I think they’ll really be the ‘12th man’ at home, starting on Tuesday night.”
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