Defence.

I am not having a go at Newcastle as a club, and certainly not their fans who I think have been superb, just at the media and a little at Pardew for fanning the Media flames and being happy to jump on their bandwagon just to save face.

 

An analysis can be done of the players expecting to be played. That doesn't mean that he has to know why those players are being played (i.e. because other players are injured). That sort of information is largely irrelevant to a preparation analysis.

And I don't think Lambert made any attempt to put together a team which worked against our defensive weaknesses, to be honest. It just fell nicely into his hands.

Who were the last two strikers to score before the game on Saturday? In fact, who are the only strikers out of your team who have scored this season so far? You guessed it - Holt and Morison. He just played the only strikers who have looked able to score this season, and it so happens that those big lads caused a whole host of problems for our CBs.

I don't blame Pardew at all. It's every club for themselves in this game. Avoiding dishing out the facts ultimately results in nothing positive. No one gives enough of a **** to go "wow that team aren't using excuses fair play to them". If you discuss the facts, then the media will report on it and yes, the team will save face to a degree. It's better than wandering around in silence and then wondering why the media are putting you down so much.

 

I think Lambert definitely played to your defensive worries, we haven't started with 2 up front regularly even at home since about the 6th game of the season so he did exactly what he has all season and chose a team to give us the best chance of winning and in this case it was to drop the wingers and play tight down the middle targeting your 2 new centre backs!

 

That would be prety shoddy preperation IMO, the team is only announced an hour or so before kick-off. You need as much info as possible about the entire squad. If you know for ertain that there is no way certain players are going to be on you opositions teamsheet then it gives you a better idea of how they might play and could effect the team you pick. As Billy says, Holt and Morison have both scored this season but it is very rare they have both started games. Lambert picked his team on Saturday to exploit a weakness in your side.

 

Oh Lambert definitely prepared for your team and it didn't fall into his 'hands nicely'. As others have said we haven't started up top with Grolt and Morison for a while and it is very rare. You think with Tiote, Taylor and Collo playing we would have still set up the same? Very naive..seems you learnt the hard way like Pardew.

 

We played to our strengths yesterday. It wouldn't be different had you had your centre backs. We have scored more headed goals and more set piece goals than anyone else. Nothing unusual for us yesterday.

 

some crazy posts by chappaz on this thread! it was blatantly obvious that lambert changed his tactics to give us a more arial threat to your new centre backs!! i've been a bit fed up with some of the reports highlighting newcastles injuries at the back. how come ours haven;t been mentioned? we've played the whole season without our centre back pairing and played a right back centre half nearly all season! newcastle crash and burn after one match without theirs and its all down to that. i don't think we got the credit we probably deserved on saturday for tearing their backline to shreds. frustrating...

 

Yeah I agree we've had 3/4 centre backs injured for most of the season and Russy has played CB for 11/15 games so far this year. I suppose we could have played Leon Barnett at the weekend but still I prefer to have the attitude we do not looking for sympathy and making excuses shying it away! I'm not saying newcastle are but we could have easily made a big deal in the press and looked for sympathy especially when whitbread, ayala and de laet all got injured in a row.

 

we signed ayala to help solve our injury crisis and he went and got bloody injured himself!!

 

That's the thing though, Superman. Pardew makes a fuss about it, blaming it for the defeat, whereas Lambert, when faced with the same problem, quietly regroups and carries on without making much of a fuss - which would of course alert the opposition to the weakness, which they will then go out of their way to exploit !

Under the radar, the Norwich City way

 

I didn't realise we had so many centre backs out until Whitbred came back from his injury. This is because Lambert or the players haven't brought it up. Newcastle use it as an excuse and we just get on with it. We could have used it when we lost to any of the teams since R Martin came in at centre back but we just got on with it.

 

I think that when Pardew got asked why/ how we let 4 goals past a defence which has been one of the best in the league, and we are playing 4 right backs rather than the same back 5 in the previous games, Of course he would say its due to injuries. A lot of Newcastle fans were more annoyed at not signing a centre back than a striker on the last day of the transfer window, No club should ever only have 2 fit centre backs at the start of the season! 3 of the goals were from set pieces which Collo and Taylor have been immense with. Norwich set up to get as many free kicks around that area and exposed the weekness. They won the game, we move on to Swansea.

 

I dare say Lambert would of started Holt and Morrison anyway, but I was a bit puzzled at why we started Hoolahan/Surman/Crofts instead of Johnson/Pilkington/Bennett. I dare say Surman's inclusion was because he was worried that Pilkington has allowed a guy to run on the inside of him a few times to many this season when covering Tierney.

 

i thought surman played very well on saturday. he's a good footballer but he lacks a bit of pace and sometimes needs to get stuck in a bit more, but i don't think anyone can fault his performance at the weekend. lambert got the balance just right using the diamond. its not the approach i would have used - i'd have gone for bennett and pilkington instead of surman and hoolahan but maybe that wouldn't have worked, who knows. lambert knows best of all!

 

I think they went for the diamond to put even more pressure on the centre backs, by keeping it tight in the middle. I too thought Surman was ok, the lack of pace is evident, but like superman says we didn't need it on Sat and the formation worked.
the formation was also fine because of their two wingers, only obertan turned up (although he didn't always have end product). i was worried about guitierez before the start as he is strong and fast, but for some reason he didn't fancy it / and Naughton played very well.

Maybe (well who knows really) lambert will start with the same team against Everton, and use pilkington as an impact sub if we need him.

 

The problem with playing 2 strikers and 2 wingers is that when most Teams play 5 in midfield you get overwhelmed in central midfield with all the problems that causes. As you say - LAMBERT KNOWS BEST!! I still suspect that after the next few weeks our 2 central defenders will be Whitbread and Ayala with De Laet as the holding midfielder.

 

true, but the advantage is you can get more crosses in the box without the need for your full backs to make up the ground. i thought we'd play wingers to throw as many crosses in as possible. in the end, the full backs did that and holt and morison both ran the channels brilliantly and also supplied the crosses. it worked a treat!

cannot see de laet playing holding role - never seen him do that before + whenever fox plays in that role, we play well. fox is one of our key players in my opinion

 

I agree Superman. I think Fox is our most underated player and I suspect that he could be just as effective played slightly further forward alongside Johnson. The reason I suspect De Laet will appear as a holding player is that after Xmas we have a lot of games against teams with pace which is a quality held by De Laet. PL has toyed with playing 3 central defenders but it has never really worked which is why I wonder if he will use Ayala and Whitbread with De Laet and, at times Fox as well, giving protection. Just a thought as we know PL can be quite unconventional.

 

This is the key:

There is simply no way anyone knows for sure, because if Lambert had a shred of managerial common sense (which he does, more than a shred in fact) he would have started the only two strikers who have actually managed to score this season. Holt is in form and so is Morison, so I think they would have been up top in this home game regardless of what we were doing.

Plus, it isn't immediately obvious that we had such trouble there. After all, whilst Simpson is a small lad, Perch is only an inch shorter than Holt. It's hardly like they're two dwarves. It just played nicely into your hands that both of our CB's ****ing sucked, and the guys we had on the field to help mark Holt did virtually nothing.

People whinge about us getting media attention over our injuries, and then whinge about Pardew going on about it when talking to journalists. Then you applaud Lambert for keeping his gob shut but then whinge when there's no coverage of your injuries.

You either play the media to your advantage or you don't. Keeping quiet about troubles your having doesn't get you any extra brownie points. You're just not doing what everyone else IS doing.

It's just the sudden change, that's all. We were conceding next to no goals against some good teams, but then the defensive changed happened and we conceded 4 against a mid-table side, despite being able to shut out teams much higher up the table with more potent attack forces.

The media love a bit of drama. A bit of change. They were always going to latch onto it as they've been wondering what would happen once injuries set into our first choice XI.

 

Chappaz, you make some good points, but...

I got to the part when you said "mid-table side" and stopped concentrating!

Definitely the first time anyone's described us as that!