Neil Adams’ delight at Norwich City’s FA Youth Cup progress
Carlton Morris makes his presence felt in the Birmingham goalmouth. Picture: Denise Bradley - Credit: Archant copyright 2012
Norwich City’s Under-18 side showed character aplenty to book an FA Youth Cup quarter-final berth at the expense of Birmingham City after extra-time at Carrow Road last night.
The Canaries looked on course for safe progress thanks to Jacob Murphy’s excellent second-half strike, but missed key chances before Birmingham substitute George O’Neill made them pay in the fourth of five added minutes.
However, despite such late heartbreak, City regrouped and found the winner seven minutes before the dreaded penalty shoot-out arrived, as Cameron McGeehan embarrassed visiting keeper Nicholas Townsend to head City through.
The Canaries will face a long trip to Everton in the last eight on a date to be confirmed.
“I’m absolutely delighted,” said City Under-18s manager Neil Adams.
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“I think over the 120 minutes we played we were the better team, we deserved to win the game and we probably could have scored another two or three goals.
“That’s the way the FA Youth Cup goes though. If you don’t take you chances you are pushing your luck a little bit.
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“Obviously we suffered the late goal to take it to extra-time but all I said to the boys after that was it’s a 30-minute game now and if I was betting on a winner from here, I’d put my money on us to win it – and thankfully we got the goal to take us through.”
Both sides had their moments in an even game, but City struck the woodwork twice and ultimately deserved to progress.
“The goals were all about delivery and we work hard on that,” Adams added.”Jake Murphy was quiet in spells today but then he shows you what he can do. It was a great finish, cutting in and putting it in the corner.
“And Cameron was brave and got across his man, and we work on that a lot. But it was all about the delivery from Josh.
“As an ex-wide man, good delivery is something I insist on, and it was an excellent goal.”