The 2018-19 Season

In the wake of that weird finish last night, PD helps to put things into perspective in the first of his five pointers:

"Sheffield United’s failure to beat Birmingham meant City have a seven point buffer in the race for automatic promotion to the third-placed Blades, with only five league games remaining. Now look at second-placed Leeds, who well may have made up some ground courtesy of a Tuesday night win at Preston. But City still have a six point advantage and at this stage a vastly superior goal difference, which in effect means another point in the Canaries’ favour should that comparative tool come into play. Those still look more than favourable odds. You can be sure both Yorkshire clubs would swap positions in a heartbeat."

With West Brom mathematically eliminated now, we need to hold our nerve through the final five matches. We were due an off peak performance after 8 straight wins and the pace and trickery of Buendia was sorely missed against a packed Reading defence. It summed up the night that it was our two CBs who found the way through where others failed. The result was a fair one in the end.

The key now is where we go from here. Cantwell tried hard, but failed to replace Buendia's magic. The quality of our play changed when Vrancic came on and I hope he starts against Wigan. Stiepermann had a poor game and, like others, looked like he was feeling the strain of a long season. DF needs to think hard about the next 4 games in 13 days. These will make or break our season.

 

As someone else pointed out. Two games ago we were 7 and 5 pts clear of 3rd and 2nd. Its now 6 and 7! Had we been offered 7 pts from Boro, QPR and Reading 3 games ago, I think we'd all have snapped the hand off.
Totally agree about starting Vrancic, he for me made a real difference when he came on (Too late by the way!) Todd wasn't bad, he wasn't really any worse than Henandez (An off night from Onel for my money and Lewis behind him) but, Vrancic lifted the teams play and whilst I half expect Farke to stick with Todd, I really think it would be a mistake.
Its crazy to have so dominated a game and to say that the majority/all of our attack were under par but so it felt, the 2 centre halfs bailed them out with the goals. The question is, do we need to freshen up the line up after one blip? Its not the Farke way so I don't imagine it will happen and he would have a point, we dominated and deserved nothing less than 3pts.

Godfrey looks wasted at the back, need him alongside Trybull to drive forward and belt them in!

Bah!

 

Before this latest round of fixtures, the club in 3rd, Leeds, needed 1.33 points per game on average, than us plus bettering our goal difference, in order to overtake us. This has now increased to 1.4 points per game for SU, plus gd, so we have in fact improved our overall position.

 

Right, gather round Leeds fans and we'll play a game of clutching at straws

The Canaries head into their 42nd league fixture of the season six points clear of us and with a plus-eight goal difference, which could swing in our favour if they start to fall off the pace and we keep the pressure on.
We shouldn’t hold our breath on that, though, as Daniel Farke’s squad have recently only failed to put two points to their name from a possible 27, a run stretching back to February 13 when they lost 3-1 to Preston.
However, a record of ours that has got a few Whites supporters chatting on Reddit could be interesting to our efforts to snatch the top spot away from the Carrow Road natives and secure our berth back in the top-flight.
That interesting nugget of knowledge is that for the past two campaigns, not only have we finished besides Norwich in the table, but we have closed out the season ahead of them.

https://leeds.vitalfootball.co.uk/i...ans-react-to-interesting-championship-record/

 

They fail to acknowledge the trend though. First quoted season, 5pts ahead, second one level with better goal difference. I'd say the logical conclusion is that they might well finish next to us again but 5 points worse off!

Bah!

 

Do they mention our shared league one season? When I believe they, at one point, were eleven points ahead of us. Did they manage to stay ahead of us? No? So they have a history of imploding in a tight situation.

 

Changing the subject slightly, here's an excellent detailed tactical analysis of our match against Reading:

https://totalfootballanalysis.com/m...ty-reading-efl-championship-tactical-analysis

They pull no punches about how it was a miracle that Reading got anything out of that game. Well worth a read if you want to know exactly what makes Farkeball work.

 

Interesting, and a good analysis. It's axiomatic that a team with that much possession and such a wealth of chances must have not exactly had the run of the ball. In 95% of games with such an imbalance the team with the upper hand would have run out easy winners and, given a decent degree of luck Pukki alone would have scored enough to have put the game beyond Reading. But from time to time these things happen.

 

I've seen a load of "Stop moaning" "Stop being negative" Stop Slagging Todd". "We are top of the league, so stop moaning!"

I've not seen a single thing pop up on my Twitter of anyone moaning or complaining, and ripping into Todds performance. Even looking through #NCFC search, I've not seen any negativity.

Are you guys seeing all the moaning? All I've seen is people moaning about moaning, that I can't find.

 

But have you checked the pinkun or worse yet canary call? Is positivity even possible on those platforms?

Bah!

 

It's not moaning, though some are implying that it is. Really, it's just disappointment after a very frustrating and emotional game.

As to GG's comment about chilling, I'm afraid I won't chill until promotion is achieved.

 

Well, no. Obviously I don't listen to Canary Call. It's always negative, even if we win 5-0.

I also don't go on the Pinkun forum. It's just a sh*tty version of this, will less lovely people.

 

I was really angry after the game. But that was because we didn't get 2 Penalties, Reading didn't bother playing football, and we battered them for a whole game and only got a draw. Plus 6 Minutes added on, which I can only guess was from Reading's constant time wasting. So it worked in their favour, and then scored in the 7th minute of a ridiculous 6 minutes added time.

None of my anger were with the team or players (although a lot under performed). I was angry about ref decisions (as usual), and our luck. We played well enough and had enough chances to win about 6 games!

Can't slag the team or players for that. Wasted chances were annoying, but we were never going to stay unbeaten until the end of the season.

 

Lucky old Nodge, playing Rotherham every week...

http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter...rces-it-cant-be-that-were-a-really-good-side/

 

Brilliant article Cromer. Shall we send it on to Leeds?

What we need now is for our 'luck' (ie. hard work and skillful tactics) to hold out for 5 more games. In fact it's only 3 more wins needed unless Leeds make up their 8 goal deficit in the other two games. Wigan will be crucial if we're to avoid the nerves of the final games while Leeds and the Blades battle it out for second place.

 

Whittaker - for not being a central midfielder. One of my favourites.

 

We drew mate that's still unbeaten