Mason Mount was “speechless” after the “craziest game of football” at Carrow Road where Derby County stole all three points from Norwich City with a 4-3 victory.
The 19-year-old scored the first equaliser for the Rams after Fikayo Tomori pulled one back to put a dint in the Canaries early 2-0 lead.
Teemu Pukki then got his second goal to put the hosts ahead again before the floodlights went out and sent both teams back to their dressing rooms with no idea what would happen next.
Mount said “you couldn’t write” what happened next as Florian Jozefzoon pulled the scoreline level again and Jack Marriott sealed the win in the final minute to cap off an unbelievable afternoon.
“It’s probably the craziest games of football I have ever been in and probably ever will play in.” the midfielder said after the game.
“To be 2-0 down after 30 minutes then to come level by half-time, to then go 3-2 down and come back when the floodlight goes off and we have 15 minutes to come back and win it – you don’t write it.
“If someone said after 30 minutes and we are 2-0 down that we would score four goals to win it, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s crazy and I’m speechless at the moment.”
He added: “When the final whistle went it was like we won the league, that is how much it meant to us to win this game.
“They are up there in the league, in second and pushing. That’s where we want to be. To come here and win is a big part in the season. It pushes us on now and we need to keep it going to get into that first or second place.”
After five goals in the first month of the 2018/19 season, Mount’s scoring slowed down. But his fourth in the league came at an instrumental time in the game, just before half-time, and put the Rams on the front-foot.
He hopes now it will now set him up for more to come in 2019.
“It was a relief!” he said. “I was thinking it will probably get a deflection and go wide because that is how it has been going for me recently, but it went in and I was very happy with that.
“I think it was a big goal at that time as well, just before half-time to get back to 2-2 to go to the break.
“I got an assist a couple games ago and that gave me a bit of confidence then scoring today gives me that extra boost moving on.
“I’ve been looking for it for a long time, trying to force it maybe a few times. It fell to me nicely in the box and I made a clean connection.”
The character of the team has been tested a few times this season, but maybe none more so than their last game of the calendar year.
Having just gone 3-2 down, both sides were taken off the pitch as staff tried to fix the faulty floodlight. Mount explained that despite not knowing if they would be allowed to finish the game, the squad were just focused on getting back out to get a result. Which is exactly what they did.
“We didn’t really know what was going on. We thought maybe the game would get postponed, we didn’t have a clue.
“We were just ready to come back on and ready to give that 15 minutes the best opportunity and the best chances we could get. When we get chances like that for Flo and Jack, they put them away. I’m so proud of all the boys.”
He added: “The character we have, we definitely have it within the squad, we have shown it before. It has been tested – obviously in the last game to lose the way we did – we wanted to bounce back today.
“Norwich are an unbelievable squad, they have a good team and they are playing very well so we knew it would be tough, very tough. We came here, we fought and the desire we had was unbelievable. That’s what you get when you put in a performance like that.”