Match Day Thread Norwich city v Watford

That's a fan's eye view Cromer. We beat Man City despite the game stats; we lost to Watford despite the game stats. But with 26 games still to be played, the game stats tell more than the result does.

 

Not sure I agree Rob. The one revealing stat this morning is the league table, of which we are now, sadly, bottom.

Until we stop gifting the oppo stupid goals like we did last night we will remain there despite our best endeavours.

 

For me it's realism rather than despair. I also wonder whether enough of our continental players have enough grit to fight for survival. I rememer Leroy Fer jogging back when the ball was lost and as GM says, there was too much of that last night. The ability is there as the Newcastle and ManCity games showed, but I'm not convinced about the grit and determination necessary for survival.

 

We beat Manchester City by being fearless, positive and on the front foot when possible.
We lost to Watford by being wasteful, indecisive, ponderous and completely lacking in confidence and cohesion.
I mean, just read the MFW report I posted a short while back - Gary G is far better qualified to comment than I - and he pretty much agrees with my viewpoint.

 

Worth a try? Plan B?

 

Good point Rick. The Bendy of last season was aggressive and energetic when tackling and running back to support the defence. At least twice last night he ambled back after we had lost the ball without any energy or desire. Of all people he should have been keen to atone for his schoolboy error but he just didn’t appear to be bothered at times.

 

I'm obviously disappointed with the results lack of goals and by the sounds of it poor performances .
This season has been a disaster with horrendous luck losing key players to injury and sloppy defensive displays.

I doubt we will spend money in January and players will not want to join us if we are rock bottom anyway .

I refuse to get too carried away with the doom and gloom and will stay optimistic that we will nick a few results along the way.

It was always going to be a tough season even with a fully fit squad but playing half injured players and players out of position is obviously a massive ask.

We are only in November so we could pull off a comeback but it won't be the end of the World even if we go back down, the main thing is we have kept our club afloat and haven't gone Kamikaze buying players on massive salaries so our future is not under threat .
I won't be calling for Farke to be replaced and have faith in our board to run this club properly.

Didn't even bother watching the lowlights from yesterday or interviews , we move onto the next game hopefully with Zimmermann back in the side .

 

I am singing from the same hymn sheet as you Dunc. Spot on

 

I've heard you sing Dave, not sure that's a good thing!

 

I do hum quite a lot

 

I am almost with you and while I am not all doom and gloom, I see relegation as inevitable. I thought this before last night; that result just placed another nail in the coffin.

With it being an 8 pm KO last night, I decided to give it a miss. There is no way I could have kept my eyes open long enough the see the start, let alone all 90 minutes of it. Having seen a few YouTube reports, I am so pleased I did miss it. Chances are I would have turned it off after 2 minutes anyway

 

It was a 0:400 kick off for me in China and I got to about 03:20 after several cold ones got the game up thought I would just rest my eyes and woke up on 93 minutes took a glance at the score had a piss and went back to bed.

No game until 23rd December Everton away 23:00 kick off.

Thank ****

 

It's Ipswich 0-0 Lincoln city in the F.A cup if anyone is interested in football still ?

Mon the Imps

 

The Imps 1-0 up

 

I'm glad I watched it on Sky because it confirmed many feelings about what has gone wrong lately. Incredibly, it now seems that all of the defenders are going to push up the pitch like Godfrey did over the halfway line before passing to Buendia, who lost the ball leading to the first goal. Do we really need the defenders to carry the ball that far forward? Godfrey was then 10 yards behind the player he should be marking as he ran on to score. Why do we have 5 midfielders? I just don't get it.

 

Usually, when one of the CB pushes forward like that, the other stays back together with e.g. Trybull and Lewis to form a three. I haven't played the game back to check, but I noticed Tettey well forward in the Watford half at one point late in the first half. I assume Godfrey was back as part of the three.
On the point about defending, what stands out for me is the numbers other sides get in their penalty areas when we are on the attack. We somehow never seem to have the same numbers available to us when the situation is reversed, except in a game like the Man City game when that was a deliberated tactic from the start. I find it astonishing that people keep on insisting, against all the evidence, that attack is the best form of defence. Soon that won't even hold water for the Championship, given how the football being played in that league is developing.

 

I agree Robbie and there is a lot of space in our defence as well. You could hardly call it a low block with two ranks of four. It seems even more curious when we have a DM playing at CB. The system that worked so well against Newcastle and ManCity seems to have been strangely abandoned.

 

Last time we were in this situation we had hired Naismith et al to give us a hand. Look how that worked out.

 

Norwich's sporting director indirectly referenced the previous regime's final roll of the dice back in January 2016, when Timm Klose and Steven Naismith arrived for large sums in a failed bid to avoid relegation.

"We had to sell James Maddison just to cover off that situation. You think, 'Wow, £21m for a player and we should have been able to do so many other things with that money at the club'. We didn't. It went to cover that black hole of what happened in that January."
https://www.pinkun.com/norwich-city...er-january-transfer-window-thoughts-1-6367195

 

Nobody is suggesting that we go down that route again, though injuries to both Klose and Naismith in those last month's were a factor. I can't see us needing to spend much in January, other than a CB on loan to cover for Klose. We have the players with the necessary skills, we just need to adjust the tactics to suit the PL. Keep a good defensive shape as we move higher and avoid giving the ball away in our own half. Having Hanley and Zimmerman back will help, but keeping the shape is also critical.