Match Day Thread AFC Bournemouth 16:00 Norwich City, Sunday Sept 27th

Erm....taking a holiday? Hiding in a fridge?

 

Agreed, but the last 2 weeks we haven't played well and pick up 4 points, which apparently wasn't good enough either.

 

Damned if you do...

 

Having a clear plan would be enough. Then supporters might be willing to say 'Fair enough, we were outscored, but we were unlucky'. Take a look at the comments here and on PinkUn: they recognise that this wasn't just bad luck, this was bad management.

Wanting to base your play on possession and creative skill while jettisoning all your creative players is not a clear plan. Nor is having a crazy mix of fast wingers putting in crosses and a player like Pukki in the middle. Nor is watching the same defensive errors week after week and hoping that somehow they correct themselves in the course of time.

 

Did you see the game CC?

 

I know I'm sounding harsh on Farke and I don't know what is going on behind the scenes. Maybe Leitner is difficult, maybe Buendia is difficult, maybe a lot of young players have had their heads turned with talk of Liverpool and Bayern and Barcelona and so on. But that's modern football, sadly.

EDIT: I've just read Farke's comments in the PinkUn about Buendia and Cantwell. I can't help but feel this public statement is the wrong move from Farke and makes it all the more certain that both players will leave. It also suggests to me that Farke probably mishandled Leitner and makes me question his man management skills. Was the disaster of the post-lockdown games the result of tensions within the club? If so, such a shame, because the players seemed such a happy unit in the promotion season. Maybe the pressure got to Farke, and continues to get to him, and he needs someone to blame?

 

Honestly, I’m scratching my head. Everything Farke has said sounds completely reasonable.

He’s much better at speaking than pretty every manager we’ve had since Lambert. And Lambert wasn’t that great, he was just gruff and Scottish.

My main problem with Farke is that he often says exactly the right thing, but then doesn’t put it into practice on the pitch.

But I genuinely don’t know what more he could have done today. We lost 1-0 away to a team which finished above us in the league and us packed with quality. We should have had at least one penalty, possibly two. He put out a different formation, dropping one player and not including another who apparently had not trained well. He changed formation at least twice. He almost managed to unlock a team that parked the bus.

I don’t think I’ve seen us dominate half a match like that in a long time - even in our promotion season I don’t remember many teams barely bothering to attack us other than with lone or pairs chasing hoofed clearances. And this is Bournemouth, who have spent several seasons in the Premier League.

Sure, Farke’s got to get us accumulating points, but frankly if you draw anything from this match other than it was our best football since we played Leicester, then I’m going to have to mark you down as wanting Farke to fail now. It always seems to happen. It’s a shame. That probably does mean he is done as once a section of the fan base makes their minds up against a manager, that’s it.

 

I also don’t understand the defensive criticism. We haven’t really let in a soft goal so far this season and I have only seen a handful of clear defensive errors (almost all from Zimmermann - one from Aarons today).

We’re actually building quite a solid defensive unit, if only they can stay fit (and together...)

 

Canary Rob said "Honestly, I’m scratching my head. Everything Farke has said sounds completely reasonable."


Do you mean the things he said about Buendia and Cantwell?

Reasonable? Stating *in public* that two of your players weren't trying hard enough in training? Oh yeah, just the kind of manager I would want to work for. Someone who trashes me in public.

 

Yes, I do. Because I suspect they were off in training. Happens all the time. Farke said it about Idah and got a reaction there.

The bottom line is that Cantwell and Buendia are valuable assets, so nothing Farke says is really going to help persuade them to stay if they’ve made their minds up.

However, if he is honest and explains to us that they’re not in the team because their temperament is not good enough, good. At least I know. Now of course there is a time and a place where that sort of information should be kept quiet (eg player lacking in confidence), but here the problem is they’re obviously not behaving like consummate professionals in the midst of transfer speculation.

Whereas Aarons is the subject of a concrete bid (ok loan, but still) from Barcelona and he still knuckles down and works hard. He made a mistake today, but other that I thought he was excellent and were it not for an excellent block, he may well have got a goal.

Farke’s priority is getting his best players playing well. With two wantaways not trying hard in training, all he has left is to embarrass them publicly and point to someone behaving better. Then we might get a game or two of quality out of them.

And if the bids never come in, then Cantwell and Buendia will know that their reputations won’t gift them a place in the squad.

So while you’re right that sometimes this sort of thing is unwise for a manager to say, I really don’t see the problem here.

The other thing I would say is that Farke makes a good point about Cantwell - he hasn’t actually had that much of an impact on the pitch for some time.

We also do not know what he has said to the two of them behind closed doors.

 

I can't agree. The place for a manager - any manager, not just of a football club - to bawl out a member of staff is in his office in private. Also, I doubt if publicly comparing two members of staff is in any Management 101 guide.

Also, you totally accept Farke's words with no corroborating evidence. I imagine Cantwell and Buendia may feel differently about their behaviour in training. But if they say anything publicly, it will start a news story that definitely won't benefit the club. At the moment Cantwell is being silent, which in my opinion makes his approach more professional than Farke's.

 

Farke can't really win in this situation though. If he's asked directly why they're not in the squad, the only neutral excuse might be to say something along the lines of "they got a knock" or a "little niggle in training" etc. Though he then runs the risk of that player in question releasing a high-intensity training video on instagram or similar and all of a sudden Farke's a liar. Excellent guess that the real reason is one or both of them being a lazy prat in training or they're locked down during transfer negotiations. I don't think he's being out of order. No one's bigger than the club etc etc.

 

Stiepermann was fit and available. Having decided not to include Buendia and Cantwell and with Dowell injured, you'd have thought Stiepi would be a shoe in to play behind Pukki. He wasn't even on the bench!

Edit: "The last goal Norwich City scored in any competition without Stiepermann, Cantwell or Buendia on the pitch was Jordan Rhodes’ equaliser at West Brom in Jan 2019 - 20 months and 66 games ago"

Tweet by Norwich City Numbers at 3.30pm yesterday afternoon.

 

I read somewhere that Stieps was injured yesterday. Will look for source.

 

I was going by the EDP report of DF's Friday press conference. At that point he was reported as having recovered from the back injury that had sidelined him and was available for Sunday. If he was unfit Sunday, something must have developed in between.

 

He didn't bawl them out he just gave an honest answers to fair questions. Most of his comments are about his beliefs and not necessarily directly attributable to Buendia & Cantwell. What he did say was that in his view this week in training 18 players demonstrated through the way they trained and conducted themselves that they deserved to be picked ahead on Buendia & Cantwell. DF has his values and has consistently shown that he picks players in line with his values and not on the basis of a players history or fan preference, which is why he has given so many young players a chance. As soon as he picks players to play that don't justify their place he'll lose dressing room. The trouble is Buendia & Cantwell haven't performed consistently well in the past, as many fans memories recall them as playing. Hopefully they've learnt their lesson. If they aren't willing to give 100% then the sooner they go the better. Trouble is they aren't as good as they and most fans think they are. Towards the end DF clearly highlights the quality he thinks both players have and how much he values them and wants to keep them. Sounds to me like they've both lost focus because of the transfer rumours and need to get their heads sorted before they play. Much better that they don't play with their current mindset. For me our best prospects that featured significantly last year are Aarons (if he can improve his crossing) & Godfery

 

I'm a bit amazed by the negativity here. It's always disappointing to lose a game, but this was probably our second hardest fixture this season (Watford away being the hardest) and we lost to a single well taken shot perfectly placed into the bottom corner. We drew last week because of a questionable penalty decision and had two of our own turned down yesterday. We've taken 4 points from one home and two away games. A home win next week against winless Derby would take us to 7 points from 4 games. Let's show a bit of patience.

Like Rob, I think we've performed pretty well defensively. By a quirk, I had the Bournemouth commentary on my iFollow broadcast and they were fairly amazed that we didn't score at least once, if not more. As for DF's comment about training I feel that it was an honest answer to a direct question. The players chosen were those who showed most in training last week. Also, according to the official site coverage, we played a 4-1-4-1 formation yesterday which seemed to cause problems for Bournemouth with Skipp shielding the defence and McLean and Rupp behind Pukki which often allowed 4 players in the box for crosses. That's the formation DF favoured when he arrived and it may be that he feels he now has the players to make it work. Time will tell.

 

Caused Bournemouth problems? If you look at the Whoscored Chalkboard it doesn't seem to have caused many problems. The vast majority of our balls into the box caused the Cherries' rearguard no problems at all. We were so ineffective that we made a notoriously porous Bournemouth defence look pretty much rock solid. Pukki had 0 shots for heaven's sake; that's a measure of just how many problems we caused them. If we are going to play like that, at least put Hugill on from the start.

 

Having just watched the highlights again I'm certain we should have had a penalty when Aarons went down in the box. The handball incident was harder to make out on the replay. Matches can turn on chances like that. Instead they got the first goal then defended the lead. I'm satisfied with the chances we created away to a team which finished 10 points above us in the PL season. On another day that could have been a draw or even a win.

 

Very odd that you would choose WhoScored, given that they specifically mark Begovic as the highest performer by an enormous margin and the top five performers on the pitch were comprised of three defenders and Bournemouth's goalscorer. It also points out the Bournemouth's goalscoring was a solo effort.

Interestingly, our aerial statistics are much improved.

And despite lots of moaning about how we played crosses in despite this being Pukki's weakness, if you look at the player hotspots, only Max Aarons played wide - we actually played quite narrowly.

You say that Bournemouth's defence is "notoriously porous", but then you only have to have watched the match to see that they played incredibly defensively.

Some might almost suggest that you are only interested in anything that backs up your viewpoint and, failing that, invent it?