Gary Rowett backs Norwich City to escape Championship scrap

Gary Rowett backs Norwich City to escape Championship scrap

Gary Rowett feels Norwich City’s quality will eventually pull them out of the Championship mire after seeing his Oxford United team snatch a point at Carrow Road.

The Canaries created enough chances to secure their first home victory of the campaign, only for Filip Krastev’s strike in the 95th minute to ensure Oxford retained their five-point cushion over Philippe Clement’s side.

Despite their struggles this season, Rowett believes Norwich have the individual quality to pull themselves out of danger in the weeks and months ahead.

“On the balance of play, of course, I’m happy with the point. I think they had a couple of moments where you maybe expect them to score the second goal,” the Oxford boss said.

“Whichever position they’re in in the league, you’ve got a team with (Kenny) McLean in and (Josh) Sargent in and a lot of other good players. Listen, I think it’s clear to see that they’re probably not going to be there for a long, long time. I think we have to accept that.

“I thought that was a lot of good things with the game and to get a point. Of course, we want three points but I don’t think I could sit here and say we deserved three points. I think that would be a little bit of an unfair reflection of some moments.”

Rowett was the happier of the two bosses with a point, admitting that Oxford had to rely on City’s lack of ruthlessness in front of goal to keep them in the contest.

“I felt for 30 minutes, I thought we were excellent. I’ve been to Norwich an awful lot of times in the Championship and regardless of where they are in the league at the moment, I thought we kept the ball really well,” said Rowett.

“We controlled a lot of that first half and maybe didn’t create as many chances as we’d like off the back of it. I was really, really pleased with that, and actually to go 1-0 down at 30 minutes, I thought was actually a little bit cruel, and we needed to defend that moment better and lost a little bit of confidence.

“Second half, for probably a 20-minute period, it looked as though they were going to go and add to that 1-0 lead with a lot of blocks and good moments of defending and a couple of wasteful moments from them.

“You’re still in the game, and we then rolled the dice, four attacking substitutions at the same time and we got some reward in the 95th minute because we were pushing probably for about seven or eight minutes before that, putting a little bit of pressure on.

“It was just that one moment we were looking for and Krastev popped up and gave us it.”