Match Day Thread Today's Games

You are the board's resident doom Goblin stinking the place up with negativity and not really a Norwich "supporter" or fan at all.

You get your jollies from being contrary In the hope Norwich fail so you can say I told you so.

We are the poorest club by miles in the Premier League and realistically our best players will always be sold so of course we are massive underdogs next season .

This is not down to Farke being thick he is tasked with producing a squad of silk purses from pig's ears.
He can't just go out and blow £100m on players and pay the wages of these calibre of players .

For me it's much better to have hope and fail than go into a season writing them off before a ball is kicked .
You miserable old sod

 

Wow, what a brave prediction. No doubt you will be saying you were the first to predict our demise , whilst the rest of us deluded fans were hoping for Champions league football. .

 

All of my life I've supported underdog teams, usually because they somehow pick me. Norwich have been one of those for the last 49 years. Others in different sports go back even longer. It isn't all about winning for me. The Championship seasons lately are great because we do so well, but there's less satisfaction in winning so many games than there is in knocking off one of the big PL teams like ManCity or even Leicester last season.

Next season won't just be about survival for me, as long as we play good attractive football and are competitive. To change our style and become a Burnley type team trying to scrape results through dour football would be a disappointment to me, even if it meant survival. Like Dunc, I accept that the odds are heavily stacked against us, but that doesn't mean I'll predict relegation before the season begins. To do that isn't being a 'supporter' for me. It's more about hoping we can avoid so many serious injuries and can play the football we're capable of most of the time and focus on long term development.

 

Norwich are unique in our business model our owners are the second poorest in the top 2 divisions and probably a large chunk of 3rd .
It shouldn't work compared to the many sides owned by foreign billionaires but somehow it does and we keep proving the doubters wrong .

Even Leicester who followed a similar route to ourselves dropping down to League 1 miraculously beat relegation then ended up League winners playing Champions League and recently lifting the FA Cup have bought their success with foreign investors wanting an expensive toy .

The fact that our club funded by academy sales and a TV chef has earned the right to lock horns with the likes of Man City and the Elite sides of the World is a massive achievement.

Doing this without selling our soul and playing style makes it even better .

With a slice of luck and astute investment into the squad I can see us being less **** than 3 other sides and survive.

Who knows we may even get into Europe it's been done before.

If we go down again then we'll have a good chance of winning the Championship again .

Survival means more than finishing 17th or above for us as we have sailed close to the wind before financially and avoided bankruptcy.

If some Iranian oil tycoon bought us throwing stupid money around I would probably stop supporting them .

 

How many times do I have to repeat that this is a false dichotomy. To pretend that there are only two options, Farkeball or Burnley, or that the only choice is between DF or Chris Hughton, or that departing in any respect from the way we play now can only mean "parking the bus", is utterly absurd.

You guys seem to think that survival this time is no more important than it was last time; it's as though you think "so what if we go back down; we'll have another great season in the Championship and everything will be hunky dory". If that's what you think, your heads are firmly buried in the sand IMO.

And Duncan, it clearly hasn't occurred to you that our so-called "self-sustaining" strategy is nothing of the sort; it's totally reliant on the "filthy lucre" of clubs whose owners you so despise -- Leicester (Maddison), Cardiff (Josh Murphy), Newcastle (Jacob Murphy, Jamal Lewis), Everton (Ben Godfrey). The reality is that we are every bit as dependent on the money of those "foreign investors wanting an expensive toy" as are the clubs they own. Our "self-sustainment" is no such thing; it is profiting from a Faustian, soul-selling pact with the very devils against whom you constantly inveigh.

 

Go on, what’s the other option then. And explain to me why you’re better placed to lecture us on this than Daniel Farke or Stuart Webber.

Why? I understand you think this is invalid as an opinion, but you have not explained the basis for that. What makes it so ridiculous to believe that? Why does it make some fans blinkered if they do? What’s the issue with it? Why do you believe you’re not blinkered?

Why are you so confident that you will be proven “right”, even after predicting doom for us this season, you having been proven wrong on all the statistics and is romping the league?

These are honest questions. I really do not understand how, other than maybe because you feel you have pushed yourself so far down one road it would be humiliating to back down, you can persist with your line of belief. The irony is, as I’ve said before, I think I would respect your opinion so much more - there are some things I agree with and you occasionally have insights - if you just held your hands up and admitted the parts where you were wrong.

 

We are self funding and selling our players to foreign billionaires that have no love for Norwich is not the same as having them own us, quite bizzare you think this really.

The fact that we don't over extend gambling our club and it's very existence on over priced "Premier league quality" assures that if we do get relegated we still have a club to support.
Not sure how that's burying our collective head's in the sand , far from it we are realists .

You seem to imply that next season unlike any other is do or die , relegation means doom and the end of the road for us .
Based on what ?

You don't actually have an opinion as to how we go forward as a club but whatever we are doing is in your opinion not going to work .

Which I can only assume means spending money we can't afford and playing a style of football different to the effective stylish brand Farke has instilled in the entire set up from U18s up .

I struggle to see any negatives in how our club is run and you seem to only look at the negatives and if they aren't there you conjure up your own by using questionable stats and bleak predictions of the future .

 

When did I ever "predict doom for us this season" Rob? The answer is, I never did. However, I have consistently predicted doom for us next season, and have consistently argued that, for all the talk of lessons having been learned, we are currently little better equipped to survive this time than last time. I say "currently" because of course there is the summer transfer window to come, and a full pre-season during which further tweaks might be made. I can't say I have great expectations in either case however.

 

So you believe we need to spend big to survive?

I'll put you out of your misery now we won't.

Spending £8m on Gibson and £5m on Gianoulis plus change is our top end price wise .

Both you probably scoff at as unambitious signings but we had the nous to try them on loan without commiting to signing them so if we failed in our mission they would probably have been sent back .

Our squad is far stronger than 2 years ago in many areas and hopefully we won't injure all of our centre backs and end up playing people out of position out of necessity.

 

Right at the beginning of the season u were very negative and maintained it, arguing our “xGA” would show us up. You did stop for the last few months when it was obvious we were going to be there or thereabouts, so you’ve probably forgotten.

Why do you think you are better placed to assess that we are “little better equipped”? Do you not have any doubts about this assessment, given literally every other Norwich observer - fan, independent and the manager/board - say differently? I find that remarkably arrogant.

 

I thought this thread is " today's games ".

 

Exactly Ukraine are up against Bahrain later get the team news up

 

It is, but there weren’t really any matches of interest going on...

 

My mention of Burnley wasn't offering a dichotomy, Robbie, it was an example of what I wouldn't want to see. Ironically, it's you who sees everything as dichotomies - black is black and white is white. When Sheffield United stayed up you admired their tactics compared to ours. Now they're relegated with 2 more points than we managed and you've ignored this decline before and after management and tactical changes.

Nobody is saying relegation would be 'hunky dory', just that it wouldn't be a disaster. We're not burying our heads in the sand, just recognising the reality of the situation. You instead insist that unless we change our tactics we will be doomed.

You rant against our self sustaining policies as 'Faustian', selling our souls to the devilish big bucks PL owners. Others would say we're exploiting their willingness to pay big bucks for players we bought cheaply and developed into top class players. It's SW and DF who have done this, making City into a top 21 club over the last 3 seasons. That's an achievement many Championship clubs would love to emulate, but to you it's some kind of failure. With the exception of Maddison, the players who have moved on have been replaced by better, more experienced players who have made us stronger and more balanced. Without Godfrey and Lewis leaving, we wouldn't have Gibson and Giannoulis now, creating a more resilient defence which will improve us next season. They've also provided us with a more generous transfer budget to strengthen further. To you, however, this is the wrong direction and the only solution is to abandon Farkeball and start all over again. Yeah, right.

 

Ah, but you notice the get out clause he has included, "as it stands" so when we escape relegation he can claim players recruited in this window changed the dynamics so his prediction is invalid. He can never be wrong.

 

My "as it stands" referred to this precise moment as opposed, not to May next year when we may or may not have avoided relegation, but to September 1st this year (at which point the summer transfer window will have closed and we'll have had a chance to assess any change of approach from DF as evidenced by pre-season and the first few league matches (in August).

 

I wasn't ranting against our self-sustaining policies, I was ranting against the hypocrisy in Duncan's railing against wealthy foreign owners when our success has been every bit as dependant on their "filthy lucre" as has the success of the clubs they own.

 

We don't actually know that our success has been dependant on the wealthier clubs. Who's to say if all clubs were in the same position to us we wouldn't have been just as or more successful. Anyway the argument is pointless you have to play the cards you're dealt, not the cards you wished you had.

 

Er, that’s exactly what Golden Eadie 2 said: “players recruited in this window”...

That’s what’s known in the business as a “gotcha”.

 

What I was replying to was GE2 saying this: " ...... so when we escape relegation he can claim players recruited in this window changed the dynamics". He simply misunderstood what I was saying, which was that I might change my prediction post-transfer window and post-pre-season. I was not hedging my bet for when our fate has actually been determined next May. I will update my prediction on September 1st