Rockins rant

Whinge, whinge, whinge, no this isn’t an overview of a mothers meeting but a description of our home fans. Every home game the only atmosphere which seems to be generated is groans from the fans and quite frankly it’s disgraceful. If people only come to the match to have a good moan then there’s no point in those people turning up. We should be getting behind the players and making the Stadium of Light a fortress again, after all it is a new era.

In typical Keane fashion the team was changed again today, though only down to injuries and suspensions. Nosworthy was ruled out with an abdominal injury and Stan Varga is serving a suspension for five yellow cards. Whitehead replaced Nosworthy at right back and Nyatanga came back into left back with Collins going into centre half to replace Varga. Keane did however stick with the 4-5-1 formation which is working well for us, at the moment at least.

The first half was dreadful and it seems to be becoming an occurring event at home. Both teams were very, very poor and it certainly wasn’t value for money. We had three decent chances in the first half and Daryl Murphy should possibly have scored from a good Ross Wallace cross, however the Irishman poked it wide of the goal. The most entertaining part of the first half was when a few people in the North Stand decided to sing the tune of 'Ring of fire' by Johnny Cash.

Half Time: 0-0 bore draw on the cards.

We started more brightly in the second half but were still far from entertaining, this would definitely be one of those games which the players would need to dig deep to gain anything from the match. The lads worked hard but the final ball was missing and we clearly hadn’t learnt any lessons from the first half when all of our crosses were cleared by Norwich’s big centre halves, yet we persisted with this tactic. We dominated the game in midfield and never gave Norwich a sniff. Time was beginning to run out and we started to up the tempo. Stephen Elliott received the ball down the right wing from Liam Miller and took it down the line, Elliott had the Norwich left back in his pocket for the whole of the second half, and Elliott then played a terrific ball into Daryl Murphy, who had his back to goal. Murphy knocked the ball out of his body with his right foot and opened his body up to unleash a superb left foot shot into the far corner, fantastic goal. From then on in we controlled the game and never really looked under pressure.

Full time: 1-0

The lads dug in well and showed lots of character to get all three points from the game. Hopefully this undefeated run will continue and see us into the play-offs before Christmas.

MOTM – Liam Miller, since he’s come back into the team he has looked a different class and another top class performance today.