SWANSEA moved nine points clear of the relegation zone, following up their surprise win at Arsenal in midweek with a narrow and tense victory over Norwich, who slipped closer towards the second tier with a third consecutive league defeat.
The contest, watched by FIFA’s new president Gianni Infantino who was in South Wales for the International Football Association Board AGM, was hardly a Premier League classic. Infantino and his entourage left 20 minutes before the end but the FIFA chief at least stayed long enough to witness Gylfi Sigurdsson’s winner just past the hour, the game’s one moment of genuine quality.
With both sides fighting to avoid relegation, this was a match neither could afford to lose so the nervous and feisty opening - which produced early bookings for Norwich pair Cameron Jerome and Robbie Brady - was hardly a surprise.
To impose themselves on this fixture, Swansea and Norwich preferred physicality and work-rate over skill and intelligence. The result was a tedious and, at times, ill-tempered affair. If proof of the alarming lack of quality was needed it was the fact that Lukasz Fabianski’s dive to push away Jerome’s 44th-minute drive was not only the first save of the afternoon, it was also the first effort on target.
Swansea’s assistant manager Alan Curtis, standing in for head coach Francesco Guidolin - still in hospital with a chest infection - tried to invigorate his side with substitutes Mo Barrow and Leroy Fer, a midfielder who spent a year at Carrow Road. Barrow had an opportunity to test John Ruddy before the hour when Sigurdsson’s deflected strike looped over the goalkeeper’s six-yard box but the striker was unable to direct the ball on target.
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As for Fer, he played a pivotal role in Swansea’s opening goal. Displaying vision and composure, qualities that had been absent until his assist, Fer supplied Sigurdsson with an incisive horizontal pass between Norwich midfielder Gary O’Neil and the visitors’ defence. The Icelandic midfielder then beat Ruddy with an accurate finish.
Norwich now needed to show more initiative if they wanted to return to Norfolk with something to show for their travels and they had late opportunities to snatch a point. Wes Hoolahan wasted the first, unable to control the ball during a goalmouth scramble before Patrick Bamford headed Hoolahan’s cross wide.
Nathan Redmond, though, squandered the visitors’ best chance five minutes from the end. Wayne Routledge’s awful clearance fell invitingly to Redmond, but the midfielder fired wide.
Swansea City: Fabianski, Rangel, Fernandez, Williams, Taylor, Cork, Britton (Fer 55min), Ayew (Gomis 82min), Sigurdsson, Routledge, Paloschi (Barrow, h-t)
Norwich City: Ruddy, Pinto, Martin, Klose, Brady (Bennett, 27min), Redmond, O’Neil, Howson, Naismith (Bamford 64min), Hoolahan, Jerome (Mbokani 64min)