The playing style is similar, but Smith places more emphasis on a balance of attack and defence, thus Farke's 4-2-3-1 is replaced by a 4-3-3 when we're playing top teams. At home yesterday, we went back to a 4-2-3-1 against Stoke as we had a clear advantage. Until Skipp arrived, Farke never put enough emphasis on DM and most of the time we played with two CMs and often got punished for that, much as we did last season with the absence of an effective DM. This season we thought that would be changed by the addition of Hayden, but he's only now come into the team in the last two games and is still far from match fitness. If he can get up to anything like his Newcastle levels of play he can make our midfield solid again and allow us to progress the ball through the thirds to the attacking players as well as screening the defence more effectively. That is where our hope lies for the rest of this season.
I seriously think that a play off place and a failure to gain promotion might be the best outcome this season, and certainly for Smith. If we go up I really can't see any other outcome that the one that is heading Bournemouth and Forest's way this year.
Bournemouth are doing OK and Forest have a couple of wins even though they are bottom! That would be a big improvement… But your point stands. The issue is Smith though. This team has the players to get promoted and will only be weaker if we don’t. If we get promoted, we will still need a successful transfer window and some luck with injuries and to maintain team spirit, but that’s what it’s like being little old Norwich.
The problem with not getting promotion is the financial damage. We already know the club will have to sell players next summer if we don't achieve promotion. There's 9 players out of contract next summer, who will presumably be difficult to re-sign, plus the loanees unlikely to return (Pukki, Cantwell, McLean, Byram, Dowell, Hayden, Ramsey, Hernandez, Hugill, Sinani, McGovern). Add a couple of player sales (Aarons, maybe Omobamidele) and you could probably find a starting XI from this season with only 2/11 players set to return next season. Webber talks about football being an "infinite game", and how it's not important what happens season-to-season, as long as the general trend is positive. I think many signings made Summer 2021 ran counter to that philosophy. We spent a lot of money on players on permanent/loan deals who were never going to stick around in the Championship. The £16m on loan signings, Rashica, etc, failed in the short-term objective but also didn't help us with that infinite game. If we go up, I don't expect us to stand a better chance of challenging in the Prem, but we need to make sure every penny spent is making sure that our future championship squad will be insanely strong and future-proofed for a couple of seasons.
Your final comment reveals the shortcomings of last season's summer signings, as they hardly made sure"our future championship squad will be insanely strong and future-proofed for a couple of seasons". Was Webber convinced we were going to survive? We didn't, and our expensive loan signings and Rashica and Tzolis all disappeared after relegation. Sargent has come good this season and Núñez came in using the money from Lees-Melou's departure. Hayden (£?) and Sara (£9m) are the only other players coming in and they have yet to prove themselves. As it is, we're in 5th place and chasing the pack.
One obvious way in which the playing styles are similar is seeking to dominate games by dominating possession. In Farke's last Championship season (2020--21), we had the highest average possession in the league according to Whoscored (58.3%). Our average possession so far this season is exactly the same, 58.3% (third in the league, bettered only by Burnley and Swansea). But within that similarity there is difference. Here's a statistic that will suprise a lot of people, (especially those with selective Farkean memory): in that 2020--21 Championship-winning season, the proportion of play spent in our defensive third (31%) was greater than the proportion spent in the attacking third (27%), a reflection of slow ball progression out from the back, a familiar feature under Farke, and one which rendered us vulnerable against teams pressing aggressively high against us. Under Smith those stats are changing; as of now, the percentage of play in our attacking third is the same as 2020--21, but the percentage in our defensive third has dropped and after 15 games was approaching 27%. The last three games have pushed it up again, to a bit over 28%. It's clear that the vulnerability exposed at EPL level has been noted by our Championship rivals; we've been subjected to high pressing in our defensive third in almost half the games played so far, most notably by Sunderland, Bristol, Sheffield and Burnley. Smith's strategy is two-fold, firstly trying to get the entire team playing higher* and secondly, when we do drop back, to play over the press rather than trying to play through it. *Not helped by the tendency of our CBs to drop deep at the first sign of danger, and to take the defensive midfield deeper with them.
Can’t help but laugh at Robbie’s desperation to get a dig in at Hanley every post. I was wondering where it would be, and there it was, right at the end.
Decent analysis up until the asterisk, but how do you quantify that, Robbie? I can't say that has stood out in my observation of matches. Hanley is our second highest rated player on WhoScored and that doesn't include any extra points for goals or assists.
An interesting stat that I saw during the week is that we have made the most "mistakes leading to an opponent's shot" with 10 twice that of 2nd place Rotherham with 5!
Yes, the stat is on FBRef: https://fbref.com/en/comps/10/Championship-Stats Scroll down to the table for Squad Defensive Actions, final column, headed Err Not all have led to goals but, as a conservative estimate, we should be at least two points better off than we currently are and we dropped at least two in the first two games purely because of crass errors. No doubt it's all somehow Dean Smith's fault .........
But we made loads of individual errors under Farke and you always blame him for our defensive frailties?… Or is this you giving a dig at Hanley?
I have no idea if it's anything to do with Dean Smith. However, if something happens again and again, it seems sensible to assume that it is not by coincidence but there are reasons why. I am not prepared to accept it is because our defenders individually are so much worse than those of every other team in this league. Nor do I believe that it's because we are playing such expansive football that we are bound to leave gaps at the back. Low confidence? Probably a factor, but then why are we doing it so much more often than Huddersfield or West Brom, say, since they are presumably even lower in confidence than us? 17 games not an adequate sample? Possibly, but making at least double the errors of anyone else is a strong result, and strong results are suggestive even with a low sample. So if it's not the way we are set up, what is it?
Sample size is one thing, but the nature of the mistakes and where they happen on the pitch are others. When does a situation become a 'defensive action' and when does it become a mistake? We made a number of obvious mistakes in our first 3 games and then went on a 9 game unbeaten run when the odd mistake happened without affecting the result. Hanley's handball cost us a point against Burnley, but otherwise we defended well with a changed back line. Gibson made mistakes early on, but he's been excellent since he came back, averaging around 7 points on WhoScored in the last 3 games. There have been problems with McCallum covering our left flank but he's averaging 6.75 in his only 2 starts this season and Byram is averaging 6.93 in his 10 starts and Hanley is on 6.94 for his 17 starts. I suspect the problem lies more in our earlier problems with injuries at DM and LB. Hopefully once matchfit, Hayden will bring more solidity to our midfield and McCallum will improve with more game time.
This isn't a dig at Smith, it's not his fault. But the problem goes back a full year. We can't tell what would have panned out fir the remainder of the season under Farke and I accept that the most likely outcome would have been relegation. But assuming a 90% chance that is still less than what subsequently occurred. Having reached that point I think that having had a manager who had galloped to promotion twice we might have completed a hat trick. I wouldn't be too harsh on Smith for the last four games. Who looked at them in advance with three of the four in the top six and two of those away and thought we might get more than five points? Had it not been for a ridiculous penalty decision at Turf Moor it would have been six. Add in Teemu's uncharacteristic penalty miss eight.
I think that's about right, but we're falling far below the points per game ratio for automatic promotion and Burnley will be hard for anybody to catch, though they're just scraping late wins - something we used to do. We're currently on 1.5 points per game which would give us 70 points if continued for the rest of the season. That's a long way off the 90+ points of previous seasons and touch and go for even making the play-offs.
Yeah I think it’s the fact the ratio need for 90 points is now 2.26 ppg from what is left. I actually think it’s going to be a lower level this season, with third place getting perhaps 83-85 points, but that still requires us to be getting well over 2ppg to exceed that - probably 17 wins plus a handful of draws from our remaining 27 games.
This makes perfect sense - coming back from warm weather training just in time for the worst of the English winter??
Oh yes, absolutely stupid -- especially when all the best places to go -- like Tenerife, described by Augsburg team manager Stefan Reuter as "simply the best" from the point of view of weather conditions -- will already be booked up by European teams stupid enough to think that warm weather conditioning and training makes absolute sense every year during their routine winter breaks. Even more stupid when you think that they actually have proper winters; it would surely make much more sense to have our players immersed for hours in ice cold pools and trudging up rain swept Welsh mountains.
Angus Gunn has been named as Norwich City’s Player of the Month for October following a supporter vote. Gunn made his first league appearance for the side this season when City travelled to Vicarage Road, impressing Dean Smith with a penalty save from Watford’s Imran Louza. The City stopper was impressive between the sticks during Norwich’s busy month, starting five out of eight of the first team’s fixtures.
