David Wagner is hoping that Norwich City’s striker curse has not struck again, as Ashley Barnes is scheduled to undergo scans on a probable knee ligament injury suffered in the 2-0 Championship loss to Leicester City.
Barnes was substituted by Adam Idah early in the second half at Carrow Road on Wednesday night after landing awkwardly when attacking a cross.
Josh Sargent, a US international, has already been ruled out till the new year after injuring his ankle earlier this season in a 4-0 league win over Huddersfield.
“It appears to be a knee ligament injury.” How serious is it? “He’ll have a scan tomorrow (Thursday), and we’ll know more then,” Wagner said. “It could be (a layoff), but we’ll have to wait and see.” The last few games have demonstrated that we have depth in the team.
“Our subs made a difference in this game.” It had Przemyslaw (Placheta) on it. Adam made an impression. Onel (Hernandez) played well, and (Hwang) Ui-Jo had some good moves and a great opportunity. We will use and require everyone.
“We said this before we began this intense stretch of games leading up to the next international break.” We have demonstrated that we can trust and faith in all of our players. Unfortunately, injuries are common in sports. We’re hoping it’s not too bad.”
The Canaries outplayed the title contenders in the second half, but Kasey McAteer scored late on to hand the Foxes their first home defeat of the season, after Kelechi Iheanacho’s penalty put them ahead before the interval.
“We’re obviously disappointed to lose, but the performance was outstanding,” Wagner remarked. “I’m perfectly fine with it. Leicester dominated the first half. We were in the second half. We put kids in too many perilous situations.
“You have to decide which areas to give them against a quality side.” “We gave them the wrong ones, but we fixed it in the second half.”The most vexing is the first goal we gave up. We had the ball twice in the buildup and handed it away sloppily both times. They punished us because we committed three faults in 10 seconds. Even though we produced three or four very good opportunities, we were not clinical enough.
“Gibbsy (Liam Gibbs) has to hit the ball at least once.” (Shane) Duffy’s header has the potential to score. Kenny (McLean) was unlucky, and having Ui-Jo on the near post was advantageous. You won’t have ten or fifteen opportunities of that kind against Leicester. This is obvious. But if you want to get anything out of this, you must be clinical.
“The players have put in an incredible amount of effort.” They never gave up hope. The audience provided encouragement. Everything was in place to achieve the desired outcome. But we were defeated by a top team. Accept and value it. Now it’s time to move on.
