At the heart of the defence alongside Grant Hanley was Norwich City Academy graduate Andrew Omobamidele for the first time at Preston North End on Friday.
The 18-year-old gave us his assessment on the painful conceding of a late equaliser, making his first start for the first team, and how we’ll move on in the next few days.
“The last bit killed us a little bit,” he said. “To get a draw like that when we were winning the game and they didn’t have a lot of chances, that’s football. If you switch off and don’t see it out until the referee blows the whistle you’ll get punished. We’ll learn from that.
“I’m a centre-back and my job is to stop goals. It’s a big lesson learned for me. You can get the mentality when you’re winning 1-0 that the referee is going to blow the whistle but you need to see it out.
“The boys made it easy for me today, especially Grant talking to me before and during the game to give me a bit of confidence going into it on my first start. I have full trust in them and they’re the best players in the league.
“I found out I was starting this afternoon and it was a great feeling because that’s why you come to the club, to progress through the ranks for moments like these. I was over the moon but knew the job that needed to be done and had prepared all week in case I would start.
“I needed to prepare mentally even though I didn’t know if I was going to start. When I saw that, I was focused.
“The last two weeks have been beneficial for me with no games. We could really work on tactical stuff. When we’re playing two games a week there’s not really enough time to work on the shape.
“I’m going to continue to give 100 percent. It’s crunch time now coming towards the end of the season so I need to go out and do my job.
“Tomorrow, we’ll dust it off and look back and say it’s a good point, one closer to what we want to achieve at the end of the season. We’ve got another game on Tuesday and plenty of games to finish it off so we’ll prepare for that straight away.”
