Norwich City 0 v Charlton Athletic 1

Praise be. We have finally won a game, our first in 19 attempts. Phil Parkinson has his first win as manager and maybe, just maybe, the monkey's off our back and we can win again in the league. I followed the game via CAFCTV text and it looks like we did just enough and if we were going to win it, 1-0 was almost certain to be the scoreline. 

Darren Ambrose broke the deadlock after only 5 minutes and we managed to close it out, something we failed to do in the home leg. Norwich piled the pressure on towards the end but we held firm. Unfortunately, Leyton Orient couldn't hang on to their one-nil lead and eventually succumbed 4-1 to Sheffield United which makes any chances of progress beyond the 4th Round a lot harder. Having said that, we can at least play the game without the attendant pressure of our league matches. 

Darren Randolph will get the plaudits for the clean sheet and a couple of great saves which kept us in front. Moutaouakil and Basey were back as full-backs and I am pleased for both that they played in a side that kept a clean sheet. Nicky Bailey also returned and Scott Wagstaff got a surprise midfield start which wil have done his confidence a power of good after months out following his horror showing against Yeovil in the League Cup.  It was one-up front again, but as I said yesterday, that's forgiveable in a fixture like this. Good to see Yussef get on as a sub towards the end.

More importantly, I guess, will be the possible knock-on effect in the league. Parky is adamant that wins would follow the first one, so we need to cross everything and see if we can carry it on at Hillsborough on Saturday. Even if we can't repeat the feat back-to-back, it at least gives us some hope that we might not get rolled over against Palace in our next home game. We are going to take enough stick for our league position as it is, but if we could beat them it would give us something positive to remember and more hope for 2009.