Posted this on the norwich forum in response to how mark lawrenson is towards us but think I went a bit off topic so wanted to post this seperately. Please go easy on me as don't post often!!! As much as it is annoying sometimes that Swansea get more praise than us, we have to remember that they are the first welsh team to be in the prem and to be fair they have done really well and the football they play at times is superb, you do wonder at times where they'd be if they had a world class striker in their side. That said i do feel we get slightly overlooked but at the end of the day no matter what praise or coverage we get it's where we finish that really matters. I think both us and swansea have been an inspiration to all those so called smaller teams in the championship what can be done with the right structure in place and most of all the right manager in charge. If Norwich and Swansea continue the season as we have so far then surely Rodgers and Lambert should be up for manager of the season. what they have both achieved on limited budgets and the football their respective teams play in nothing short of amazing!! I look forward to the game on saturday which will be contested by 2 teams that if they keep their managers will be main stays in the prem for a long time to come. As a Norwich fan I know we've been ahead of Swansea almost all season an d this is no moan about us as we've been superb but the way Swansea have played has been brilliant especially against the big teams. Sorry for the long winded post but in summary well done swansea and well done norwich 2 teams to be extremely proud of and 2 teams that hopefully have bucked the trend of having to spend big and play ugly football to survive, we've both played how our managers believe the game should be played without big time charlies but as a team. Bravo Lambert and Rodgers and long may both of them continue to be a success!!! Roll on Saturday in what should be a great game between 2 good prem sides who both sets of fans should be immensley proud of!!
I don't pay attention to Swansea and I don't do getting jealous about other clubs getting more coverage. I actually quite like the idea of the establishment being against us, I like seeing ******s like Lineker, Lawrenson, Hanson and Shearer getting annoyed by having their 'supposed' knowledge of the game questioned by their ignorant assumptions, we're making them look like absolute jokers and we're just further proving what a group of amateurs they actually are, I'm sure if you asked the opinions of 8/10 real football fans about MOTD they'd absolutely slaughter it . The one thing which the media only pisses me off with is the section of our fans they show which usually some pleb with a jesters hat or wig or some grown up with face paint on but that's just my take on it. Also well done Swansea thanks for ruining my birthday last year . Should be a good game.
Let's be blunt here, who really cares what the pundits think? We are both small clubs gatecrashing the Premier League party and some people can't hack it. Yes, we are getting plaudits now but I'd prefer if they toned it down a bit or else we'll get richer clubs trying to buy our players, do you really want that worry ? The bottom line is that both clubs play in their own ways a good style of football and there's no chance either will go down. I've been under the impression that the pundits have wanted QPR to stay up and not given a rats arse about our clubs, funny how the fans of our respective clubs both seem to want each other to stay up but couldn't care less about QPR !! Good luck after Saturday but I don't think you need it, not by a long shot.
Long me we have to whinge about Lauro et al. Much rather that, than staying up later for 15 seconds of infuriating coverage with Claridge's posse!
Very happy under the radar thanks. We've performed above expectation but no reason why we should expect more than the basics on MOTD. We're sat in the dulldrums of mid-table where a result means little to your average neutral or it seems a pundit. We're still Blackpool to them until proven otherwise circa May 2012.
Good thread barclayenddan. I think both of our clubs will stay up this year, hopefully, and both teams have been successful with different styles of play but equally interesting and entertaining to watch. Similar ground sizes, yours a bit bigger and a similar population catchment area but a great fan base that has kept bums on seats throughout the season for both clubs. We have both been in this position before and ended up going down, Swansea almost going out altogether. Hopefully our managers, Lambert and Rogers, who are proving themselves to be great managers and will eventually leave us for bigger clubs of that there is no doubt, but hopefully they will stay with us long enough to get ourselves established and that is a tough call unless you are one of the regular top 7 or 8 clubs with 40 000 plus spectators every week and even Sunderland with their huge crowds are a yo yo team up and down. I'm just enjoying every game and amazed that the Swans are in the Premiership and I get to watch them on tv here in the USA. Have even been stopped a few times by people when wearing my Swans shirt and that's cool. We have some young players which is a good thing and a bad thing as young players move on and we could lose them and you can't fault them for that but they will still need to be be replaced, money, ground extensions to increase capacity are all expensive but that really depends on us staying in the Premiership for an extended period, and that is the hardest thing to do. Staying there. Best wishes to visitors Norwich and your fans for the weekend visit the the Liberty, no offense but I hope you get stuffed and I hope no offense taken. Hope it's a great game.
i would'nt have called norwich one of the smaller clubs in championship with 26,000 every game, and they're not one of the smaller clubs in the prem either, they're the 12th best supported side in the prem, swansea are real mighty minnows though.
Really good thread this, Dan (I assume?), and so far, it's shown what a great bunch of fans the Swans are! I suppose an honorable draw is too much to hope for, but, as has already been said, no matter who wins, it won't be the end of the World for the losers! Have a great rest of season, Swans, take a few more 'big' scalps, and we'll try and do the same!
To be fair to them, the "boy lineacre", Shearer and co have no say in the editing of the programme. They just sit out front and give opinions and they are based on highlights they get to see. And they know nothing about us so they make it up. But there again they are getting paid thousands of pounds to do so. Why is it only ex professional footballers are invited to give their opinion? Sky has a whole stream of them watching games at the weekend and they don't know any more than we do in reality. I'm over 60 and have watched thousands of games so just because I wasn't good enough to play football at the highest level, doesn't mean I can't see with my own eyes and brain whats going on.
Although we have different styles of play, the overall blueprint adopted by Rodgers and Lambert is to stay in the PL with the vast majority of players who had not played in the top league before, and it's looking like it will succeed. This will be a huge inspiration to others for sure. Do you need to spend £5-10m on a player with PL experience anymore?? Are they any better than a £1-2m Championship/League 1 level player? Well we will know the answer in May with QPR who have adopted that model.
Totally agree Redruth It doesn't bother me that much that we don't get as much coverage, but what really does grip my **** is the fact that Hansen earns 40k of tax-payers money every episode of MotD to just sit there and state the bleeding obvious. Disgraceful use of public funds, though I see he is about to take a pay cut so he'll only be on something like a million a year which obviously makes him far more value for money It did annoy me a little when we secured our first clean sheet of the season against Chelsea we didn't get any mention at all and it was all about Torres missing his chances rather than Ruddy having a blinder and putting himself in the frame for England - but then I guess it was only what I expected so I shouldn't have been too annoyed
Lawrenson & Shearer, I can put up with at a push. Hansen really gets my goat, the superior attitude & (non) knowledge of common sense. A pay cut hey, why do the BBC pay him anything at all. Why do the Beeb employ him?
Match of the Day highlights can give a very misleading impression of a game. The neutral watcher obviously wants to see the shots at goal, but if you watched WBA v. Swansea highlights in the first half you would have got the impression Swansea were being pummelled whereas nothing could be further from the truth. Swansea dominated the half with typical possession football, WBA had the half chances which were shown. Roy Hodgson (top bloke) said post-match we were better than them. Not sure what my point is. Better stop...
Same for City against Bolton aswan, we were all over them like a rash for most of the game, but watching MOTD you'd have thought they had virtually 50% of the posession No-one likes us - we don't care OTBC ... CTI ... ILWT
i think a little analysis would go a long way, rather than just saying 'yeah, they are doing quite well, better than we thought'. tell us why we are doing so well! maybe we been a little spoilt by the way sky have covered football in the past twenty years...
Exactly right! I would rather have Match of the Day over ITV though! As I said on another thread the best they did for Swansea was counting from 1 to 22 for a very well made goal. For Norwich, how about looking at that charging run into the box Pilkington made to get our second after he had passed to Martin?
Part of it is the 'small club' thing, part of it is that we have still largely unknown players, but as I said on another thread, I genuinely think the BBC pundits don't understand what it is that BR and PL do. They can't analyize it because they don't understand how it works. The pundits collective 'brains' aren't enough to begin to unpick how Lambert and Rodgers work.
the term that gets me annoyed is when pundits describe a smaller club as a 'lesser' club. we are no 'lesser' than anyone else! we might have a smaller fan base but we are not anyones 'lessers'. call us a smaller club if you want to, thats fine
Spot on. Anyone watching Hodgson's comments post-match after watching the MOTD highlights must have thought wtf??? Completely omitted Allen's strike at goal which only just flew past the post. That said, (and no offence is intended to anyone) I do detect some 'small man syndrome' amongst both sets of fans here. As I've posted on the other thread, the pundits were no different to anybody else when they said the newly promoted teams would struggle. ALL of us to a man (woman) would have taken 17th at the start of the season. To be fair, I recall Shearer saying early on that the Swans would be fine. Yes, these ex-players get paid a ridiculous amount of money just for giving opinions but that's just the way it is. If you don't like it, don't watch it.