That could well be the case Robbie, but in the end it's Wagner's decision, which had it failed could have left him very vulnerable indeed. That McLean also managed to provide the assist for Idah's winner was a special bonus. As Paddy Davitt commented: "It was McLean’s clip into an area over the top of the Bristol defence that allowed Idah to muscle his way into the home penalty box for the heart-stopping finale. In the context of City current struggles, Wagner’s boldness in his selection policy for this game was either going to be packaged as brave or foolhardy - both in terms of the starting line up and his use of replacements. Too often it has felt he ended up the wrong side of the line. Not on this occasion."
Kenny is the captain in Handley's absence 2 players some of the Norwich faithful wanted to jettison fron the squad ...
The return of Gunn was massive. Without him we probably would not win this game. I am not sure what people want from Idah, but so far this season his all round performance has been decent. He is not a Pukki style player, more a Holt who is not yet as good. The raw material is there, I just hope it is moulded in the right way.
The trouble is you could probably go back 2 seasons and still say the same thing about him. There's only so long you can be one for the future. Bottom line is he's a striker that's getting plenty of playing time, but scoring very few goals. So for me what I want to see from a young player who's getting plenty of playing time is, some sign that he's moving in the direction of fulfilling his potential.
Sorry, but I disagree he's nowhere near the quality of striker that justifies us playing a system built around his strengths. As a young player is should be more than capable of adjusting his style to fit the team.
According to the BBC's list of the current top 20 goal scorers in Championship, Idah (6 goals) is one of 8 players ranked =11 (along with, e.g. Jamie Vardy, Daniel James, Watford's Rajovic, and Dewsbury-Hall). But if you look at scoring rates, Adam's 139 mins per goal makes him third best of the 20, the only players ahead of him in that respect being Blackburn's Szmodics (currently the Championship's top scorer), and Saints's Adam Armstrong (currently second in the league). Likewise, if you look at goals scored per 90 mins, Adam's 0.65 is fourth best in the league. If we suppose that Adam had played 90 minutes in all 19 league games this season, those scoring rates would equate to 12 goals, equalling Armstrong's tally in second place. I think carrowcanario is underestimating him.
On a minutes-per-goal basis, he is 4th in the league (139 mins per goal) - just behind Adam Armstrong with 136 mins per goal. At Championship level, I’m not sure what more quality to expect to be honest.
Idah's biggest problem is that NCFC have done very little to help his development since that hat-trick against Preston in 2019. He's 22 and played 102 games for Norwich, but he's played less than 3800 minutes from August 2019 til now. That's fewer minutes than Max Aarons played in 22/23 alone. Idah desperately needed a loan a couple of seasons ago but his development needs have been secondary to squad needs, and further disrupted by injuries. It's meant he's had to do all his development in the spotlight of the senior team, and mostly in sub appearances. And even then, that's been in a team that until recently was designed for a Pukki type striker. We're finally playing a style (if you can call it that) which suits Idah more, but the expectations on him aren't in line with his development stage. Hopefully he can stay fit, continue to develop, and make that contract he signed recently look like a steal.
It was certainly nice to have it go our way, but I disagree that it has mostly gone the opposition's way so far this season. There are only two games this season where IMO you'd be justified in saying "We wuz robbed!", the first being Rotherham, the second Blackburn. In contrast, including Sunday, which in all fairness should have ended in a 1:1 draw, we have come away with more points than we deserved on at least seven occasions, the others being the matches against Southampton, Stoke, Birmingham, Coventry, Cardiff and QPR.
We "wuz" robbed against Southampton Robbie. Perfect goal disallowed and illegal goal for their equaliser.
Those decisions don't in themselves determine whether the result was fair or not. Suppose our"goal" had stood and their "goal" had been ruled out, with a final score of 3:5 to us. Would that have been a fair result? No! Saints didn't deserve to lose that game. So what would have been a fair result? If you look at the performance of each team, I think a neutral would conclude that the fair result would have been a Saints win. So the two decisions you question actually led to a result which "robbed" Saints of 2 points. It was they who "wuz" robbed, not us. As Daniel Farke often complained, football is not fair; oft times teams don't get what their performances deserve. But fairness isn't about whether or how refereeing decisions impact the result.
I was more referring to those starting spells in games where we have been dominant and not taken our chances, only for the opposition to score with their first opportunity and lead us to collapse
........ I think our opponents have us weighed up and just wait for the energy and intensity to drop off, as it usually does after 20--30 minutes. It's not as if we pen them back for 90 minutes and then succumb to a swift break out in added time -- as happened once or twice under Farke! Knapper will almost certainly have addressing our inability to maintain intensity levels, high up on his "needs to change" list.
Yes, it was all going nicely to plan except that Gunn made those two crucial saves that kept it to 1:0 at the break.
