{"id":37207,"date":"2026-03-28T16:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T15:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/matchplug.com\/blog\/?p=37207"},"modified":"2026-03-28T16:57:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T15:57:11","slug":"southampton-move-into-play-off-places-with-narrow-win-over-norwich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matchplug.com\/blog\/southampton-move-into-play-off-places-with-narrow-win-over-norwich\/","title":{"rendered":"Southampton Move Into Play-Off Places With Narrow Win Over Norwich"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Southampton climbed into the Championship play-off positions for the first time since the opening weekend of the season after a hard-fought 1-0 victory over Norwich at St Mary&#8217;s on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Finn Azaz was the match-winner, pouncing on a quickly taken throw-in to fire home in the first half. But the three points owed plenty to goalkeeper Daniel Peretz, who was in inspired form throughout. The Israeli stopper made several crucial saves, capped by a stunning double-stop in the second half to keep the clean sheet intact.<\/p>\n<p>The result moves Tonda Eckert&#8217;s side above Wrexham into sixth place on goal difference, with eight games of the season remaining. It extends their unbeaten run to 13 games and keeps alive what has been a remarkable turnaround in fortunes. Southampton also have an FA Cup quarter-final against Premier League leaders Arsenal to look forward to.<\/p>\n<p>Norwich, despite winning 11 of their last 14 league games, find themselves nine points outside the top six. Their play-off hopes are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Southampton climbed into the Championship play-off positions for the first time since the opening weekend of the season after a hard-fought 1-0 victory over Norwich at St Mary&#8217;s on Wednesday. Finn Azaz was the match-winner, pouncing on a quickly taken throw-in to fire home in the first half. But the three points owed plenty to goalkeeper Daniel Peretz, who was in inspired form throughout. The Israeli stopper made several crucial saves, capped by a stunning double-stop in the second half to keep the clean sheet intact. The result moves Tonda Eckert&#8217;s side above Wrexham into sixth place on goal difference, with eight games of the season remaining. It extends their unbeaten run to 13 games and keeps alive what has been a remarkable turnaround in fortunes. Southampton also have an FA Cup quarter-final against Premier League leaders Arsenal to look forward to. Norwich, despite winning 11 of their last 14 league games, find themselves nine points outside the top six. Their play-off hopes are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":37208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,159,164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","category-football-news","category-others"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Southampton Move Into Play-Off Places With Narrow Win Over Norwich - Matchplug Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Southampton climbed into the Championship play-off positions for the first time since the opening weekend of the season\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/matchplug.com\/blog\/southampton-move-into-play-off-places-with-narrow-win-over-norwich\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Southampton Move Into Play-Off Places With Narrow Win Over Norwich - 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