Manchester City v Norwich - The Ties That Bind

After the demolition of Crystal Palace in the League Cup midweek it is now back to Premier League action for the boys in blue. This weekend they host Norwich City and in its more recent history this has been a very good fixture for one City in particular.

In the last two decades City, Manchester that is, have only lost four times with the last defeat coming at the Etihad in May of 2015. You may remember that game as Jack Rodwell actually got a brace for City in that game, and City fans rejoiced!

In our meetings with the Canaries in both our past League winning seasons we have demolished the side from Norfolk on our own turf. 7-0 was the score line when we hosted them on the 2nd November 2013 (yes, that's almost two years to the day exactly!) Seven goals for City from seven different players, in fact I think only Joe Hart didn't get on the scoresheet that day!

The title winning season before that, while under Mancini, we beat Norwich 5-1 at the Etihad. That game was played in early December and again had each goal credited to a different player.
Historically we enjoy a good 50% win ratio with the other half shared out between their victories and tied games. When you assess the stats when Manchester City are the home side it increases to a little under 75% with 18 of the 25 games played on our turf resulting in all our points.

A little fun fact would be if City were to repeat the result from two seasons ago then our total goals against Norwich would reach the 100 mark (at the moment we are only a single goal from having scored 60 goals against the Canaries at our ground).

You remember when Manchester City went 2-0 down to Bayern Munich in the Champions League Group stage in the 2013/14 campaign. Goals from Silva, Kolarov and Milner scored for the blues to hand us a win at the Allianz Arena. Twenty years earlier, in the 1993/094 UEFA Cup, a stunning Jeremy Goss strike helped Norwich to a win in the same stadium. They were the first English side to do that and we, twenty years later, became the second. In contrast to us being behind and grabbing the win, Norwich were 2-0 up after half an hour before Bayern pulled one back. Who scored the eventual Norwich winning goal that night? Mark Bowen, ex Manchester City Assistant Manager while Mark Hughes was our Manager. Also in that side was Spencer Prior, who would go on to play for the Blues in the early 2000's and an unused substitute that night, Gary Megson. Megson had just left blue for yellow and would eventually come back to manage them for an all to brief time.

Darren Huckerby, Craig Bellemy, Ashley Ward, Dickson Etuhu, Danny Mills, Javier Garrido Mick Channon, Asa Hartford and of course Justin Fashanu all played for both Cities while John Bond left Norfolk for Manchester's blue hot seat. Mel Mechin played for them in the mid 1970's then managed us a decade later. Even Antoine Sibierski found himself at Carrow Road, although only on loan.