Mixed Emotions For Norwood

A good personal performance was dampened for Oliver Norwood as Cardiff stole a win at the death last night in the terriers opening tie in The Championship. The Yorkshire Club just couldn't hold onto a deserved point and were punished for not being clinical enough which left Norwood with mixed emotions about the game;

"That’s football isn’t it? 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 sent a spectacular effort goal wards for the terriers in the first half and came close to giving Huddersfield the lead but unfortunately it just wasn't meant to be. Norwood heavily praised the Cardiff goalkeeper in his post-match interview;

"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."

Norwood admitted that the whole squad were feeling pretty hard done by after suffering the defeat but he is already thinking of the game against Nottingham Forest on Tuesday night;

"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."

Norwood thanked the fans for travelling to the Welsh capital and stated a major part of himself playing football is to entertain the fans;

"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."