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Leicester City midfielder James Maddison has described his final game for Norwich as “the darkest place I have been in football.”

The England international suffered knee ligament injury in the last match of the 2017-18 season as Norwich lost 5-1 to Sheffield Wednesday in the Championship.

The injury, which fortunately did not require surgery and was better than first feared, nearly had dire consequences for both the Canaries and Maddison.

Norwich needed to sell the playmaker in the summer of 2018 to avert a financial “disaster”, the club’s sporting director Stuart Webber has said. If Maddison had been sidelined for a considerable amount of time, Norwich would have been forced to sell multiple players, damaging their promotion charge the following season.

For Maddison, the knee ligament damage nearly prevented him from securing a Premier League move, and that is why he is grateful for City, who took a “risk” to pay £20m for an injured player.

“It was the darkest place I have been in football,” Maddison told the Eastern Daily Press ahead of this weekend's meeting between City and Norwich. “I was in tears in the changing room while the game was still going on.

"If you knew how I felt on that last day. As soon as I stood up I knew something wasn't right. My knee was almost wobbly and I was putting it on the floor but not really feeling any weight through it.

"You think the worst straight away, that I've done my cruciate or whatever. I tried to continue, had a little jog, couldn't do it so had to go off and the knee swelled up almost straight away.

"That's why I was so grateful to Leicester, the owners, Claude Puel the manager at the time, because they bought an injured player really. It was a risk.

"I was doing my rehab, the knee was getting better and it was fine, but it is still a risk to buy a player who was not fully fit or cannot train fully. They paid £20m or whatever it was and it's why I will always be grateful to Leicester.

"Now I'm an England international, something I dreamed about as a boy. I'm still just a young lad from Coventry who wanted to play football.

“I believe I belong in the Premier League and now I'm playing for a side second in the table. It's fairytale stuff really.”

Maddison was not the only Norwich player to get a Premier League move in the summer of 2018.

Goalkeeper Angus Gunn, who had been on loan at Carrow Road from Manchester City in 2017-18, secured a switch to Southampton.

This season, Gunn conceded nine to City in English football’s record top-flight away win, Maddison curling in a free-kick for the eighth.

The result was sparked by a “Sunday league” team talk from Brendan Rodgers.

"Normally we'd shake hands or have a word in the dressing room but [Gunn] was obviously not going to be in a good mood after that one,” Maddison said. "So I left it and then texted him.

"We were 5-0 up at half-time, I think, and it was just one of those games when everything went in. I couldn't believe it. The messages from the manager to the players at the break was this is 0-0.

"As silly as that sounds, almost like you might hear in Sunday league.

"That was the attitude we had and we went out and we played it quickly, there was no foot off the gas, no feeling sorry for Southampton. Topped off with a free kick, which is always nice."