I think to be fair to Farke he inherited a dressing room that appears to have had very little team spirit, with the lunatics running the asylum. Over time, despite fan sentiment and with the support of Webber, he's shipped out the problems, changed the environment and got everyone working together.
So after 9 points from 3 games to erase the travesty that was the Stoke game, where do we stand now? With one third of the season gone, we've got 27 points. If we maintain that rate over the rest of the season we'll have 81 points plus one more match (3x15=45). Hopefully we've put those early mistakes behind us now and we seem to be playing with the required consistency for a top 6 finish. With the table so tight though, all we can say is that we've given ourselves a good chance. Looking ahead, we are one of four teams in top form with Sheffield United and, surprisingly, Birmingham and QPR who have both shot up the table of late. Just as important though, is that we now have a 4 point gap over Forest in 7th place (which was created in part by our recent win on their turf). We are now averaging 1.8 points per match overall, but well above that recently. If we can average 2 points per match in our remaining games, we could finish with 88 points, more than enough for a playoff place and possibly enough for automatic promotion. My hope is that with the improvement in our play and our players (especially the youffs) and the players returning from injury, we can maintain that sort of consistency from here on out. A big ask certainly, but not beyond the realms of possibility. The next key indicator will be in 8 games time when we reach the halfway point. Sat Nov 3 Sheffield Wednesday A Sat Nov 10 Millwall H Sat Nov 24 Swansea City A Tue Nov 27 Hull City A Sat Dec 1 Rotherham United H Sat Dec 8 Bolton Wanderers H Sat Dec 15 Bristol City A Sat Dec 22 Blackburn Rovers A
These are the fixtures for the current top 6 - I wonder how much it will change during the month - Some quite pivotal games with QPR and Brum on good runs and quite a few of the teams with only one home game.
Interesting JMF. Swansea is the only current top ten team we face in our next 8 matches. If we could pick up 16 points from those 8, we'd be on 43 points at the halfway stage. Obviously, if we can better that, we could be in a very strong position. In the second half of the season 6 of our games against the current top 10 teams are at home and 3 are away (us being the other top 10 team). It's football though, so anything can happen.
Gary Gowers makes a good point about City's performance against Brentford: "This one wasn’t beautiful – for long spells, it was the antithesis of those online clips of Todd Cantwell’s dancing feet and tiki-taka goals involving 18 players – but, in many ways, was no less impressive than the wins against Forest and Villa. In fact, this one was more ‘Championship’ than the Championship itself, with on this occasion grit, grind and attrition pushing silk and swagger to a very poor second. But [cliché klaxon] still they found a way. And over a marathon 46-game season, especially one that now comes with aspirations of a top-six finish, that’s how it has to be." With winter coming on, that ability to grind out results in poor conditions could be vital to our promotion chances. http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter...s-deliver-again-for-the-third-time-in-a-week/
From Matt Howman on the PinkUn - 'Farke is finally delivering the football he promised when he joined Norwich City and is doing things the right way so for me, this season is now about getting the most we can out of our squad, enjoy as many games as we can in the Carabao and FA Cup and focus on playing the best football we can. We shouldn’t now look to put pressure on delivering a top six finish after a good run. I’m happy to let Farke develop a team for the future, as long as he’s finally finished with side to side passing around the back four!' I'd happily settle for a top ten finish!! http://www.pinkun.com/norwich-city/...column-matt-howman-forget-promotion-1-5757616
Stat from the Guardian, 23 points from our last 10 games makes us the best performing team in the Football League over that time. Keeping that up would be miraculous, so I'm just hoping the plateau isn't too far below this peak!
Sounds like loser speak to me, the bar is now set, anything less than top 6 has to go down as a disappointment. The league is super open, we've shown we can beat some of the other contenders. And we have several key players to come back in. Look out Premier league, here we come! Bah! p.s. not drunk........yet!
As confirmed here - https://www.not606.com/threads/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics.367638/page-2#post-12249295 #22
I do worry about a loss of Tettey or the boggy pitches of winter but we now look a side capable of competing for promotion. Bah!
So MB in his match summary broke the news that Thompson requires surgery on his dislocated shoulder and we won’t see him again until February.
The upside of how DF and his staff are developing our youff is that we should have no problem in signing promising young players from anywhere in the country and so Delia's 'self-financing' model MAY just work – especially with Aarons, Lewis and Cantwell all likely to be playing in the PL next season and so bringing many £Ms in transfer fees making up for the ‘hole’ in our coffers. Edit - Following on from Howe’s post-match comments last night, COULD NCFC make it to the PL and so the 3 players I’ve just mentioned would be CRUCIAL to even the slimmest chance of our PL survival. I’m BEGINNING to think that we could be in the mix at the end of the season and IF we can beat the Owls on Saturday (I’m predicting a comfortable victory for the Canaries!!!), ANYTHING is possible.
The main thing learned from last night is that we have a few, maybe several, PL quality players. Unlike our last two promotions ( are you reading this in suffolkate?).
Looking ahead, the good news from last night is that Pukki should be available to replace the ineligible Rhodes. With Stiepermann and Cantwell both out, we have ready replacements in Vrancic and Hernandez. On the bad side, Zimmerman picked up a 5th yellow card and so will miss the match, but that will give another chance to Godfrey at CB and possibly another U23 CB on the bench. Any suggestions?
I thought Carabao Cup cards didn't count towards league games. The best source I could find: https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/foot...ards-count-across-all-competitions-efl-rules/ "New rules have been brought in this season which mean changes across many areas including the yellow and red card system. In the past, yellow cards picked up in the Premier League, football leagues, FA Cup or Carabao Cup would be added up together. This meant that five yellow cards across all competitions would result in a player missing one match - in whichever competition they should have been playing in next. However, the changes this season will see yellow cards only counting in the competition they are received. Red cards will continue to count across all competitions."
