Coventry 2-4 Norwich: Canaries hit four again in thrilling win

Norwich continued their superb start under new boss David Wagner with a 4-2 victory at Coventry.

Having thrashed Preston 4-0 in Wagner’s first Championship game in charge, the Canaries raced into a 3-0 lead inside 18 minutes through a Michael Rose own goal, Onel Hernandez and Josh Sargent.

Coventry, watched by new majority owner Doug King, reduced the deficit to one with quickfire strikes from Jamie Allen and Kasey Palmer – all five goals coming inside the opening 26 minutes.

Things settled down after that but Kieran Dowell added a fourth for Norwich in the 65th minute, with leaders Burnley next up at Carrow Road in two weeks time.

The Canaries flew out of the traps once again and found themselves two goals ahead inside 10 minutes.

Rose set Norwich on their way when he got the last touch to Gabriel Sara’s corner amid the attention of Grant Hanley following a spell of Norwich pressure.

A free-flowing Norwich attack yielded the second when Dowell picked out a wide-open Hernandez in the box after Sargent’s clever flick.

The Cuban looked to have got the ball stuck under his feet but composed himself enough to evade the attention of Brooke Norton-Cuffy and fire through a crowd of bodies for his first goal since August.

Tim Krul almost offered the Sky Blues a route back into the game but Gustavo Hamer couldn’t take advantage of the Dutchman’s poor clearance.

Sargent offered Coventry a warning shot on 16 minutes when Ben Wilson was forced to turn the American’s effort round the post and the former Werder Bremen man made no mistake at the second time of asking.

Sara’s delicate outside-of-the-foot ball found Teemu Pukki, who drove to the byline and squared for Sargent to sweep home Norwich’s third after 18 minutes.

The response was almost immediate. Palmer’s deep cross was knocked down by Jake Bidwell into the path of Allen, who volleyed into the top corner to reduce the arrears.

Palmer, who had played more than a helpful hand in the opener, then reduced the deficit to just one eight minutes after Coventry had found themselves three goals behind.

Norton-Cuffy’s cross from the right picked out Viktor Gyokeres and his wayward touch inadvertently teed up Palmer to side-foot his second goal in as many appearances.

Hernandez was causing Coventry all sorts of problems with his movement on the left and he was offered a golden chance to give Norwich breathing space once again but could only lift his effort over the crossbar.

The Canaries almost started the second half in similar fashion to the first, Hernandez digging out an inviting cross for Max Aarons at the back post before almost doubling his tally when he cut inside and struck the outside of the post.

Dowell had the final say when he gave Norwich breathing space again, latching onto former Sky Blue Sam McCallum’s cut-back before drilling home a fourth.

Pukki and Allen both missed decent chances to add to the scoring late on.