One thing's for sure, Holt needs dropping until he sheds the weight. He got unfairly abused for being fat last season, but right now, he is one big fat, slow bar steward!
I said elsewhere that I think Allardyce won the tactical battle. He tried to play it on the ground for most of the first half, saw that we were increasingly taking charge and were the better team on the floor, so the second half became pure head tennis. I don't just mean the long hopeful punts into our penalty area in the hope that we made a mistake, but even midfield passes became air passes, which meant we struggled to get it down on the floor and play it. The second half was ugly and poor in my opinion. West Ham are ugly. But they have 7 points compared with Southampton (who play a hundred times more attractively) have 0 and Reading (who have also tried to entertain) have 1. I wish Blackpool had won the playoff final. They try to play football. Stoke and West Ham in the Premiership. Ugh!
Don't see that myself vietnam. As you go on to say, having failed to score early on, and as we got more control of the game, he had to adjust his tactics to counter us. That's not winning any tactical battle, it is battening down the hatches for a point. Even then, CH stuck to his guns and we could well have won the game second half. Yes, Allardyce lowered the quality of the game, but that was no "tactical victory".
Hi Guys This was my view point on the game, as it is the 1st time i have seen you under Who-ton. First half i thought was ok, both sides had decent chances yet i always thought that against the top half sides both teams would struggle. For you i would say Ruddy was outstanding and for Wet Sham Diame and Reid stood out. Second half was probably one of the worst half of football i have seen (and thats saying something for a ipswich fan at the moment) i have never seen so many poor crosses in one game and it would have been an injustice if any side won. two things i noticed is how one footed is snodgrass! and the size of Holt, now i know i have had a dig at his weight in the past, but bloody hell he is certainly stocking his cupboards up with his wage rise! Also, top marks for the ref, he got every major decision 100% correct especially the penalty/free kick one for you guys.
I think that most of the points on the thread are pretty fair. Hard to describe JR as outstanding as he had so little to do but a bit of Guru-wumming is to be expected after another poor result. Sadly I think that Guru does make a valid point about Holt. I know that he is usually a slow starter but he was poor on Saturday. What surprisded me was how badly he was timing his jumps when contesting aerial balls. I was surprised to see Jackson get the hook first as I thought that he was the most dangerous player on the pitch. West Ham were a poor team but should be better once Carroll is back and I do see this as another two pretty important points dropped. If we can't win our home games against the likes of West Ham and QPR it could be a tough season. All of that being noted I still think that we are pretty close to being a decent side and just need to maintain the porgress the defence has made and start to create and (more importantly) finish some chances. At the time I thought that the ref had a shocker but having gone home and watched match of the day I have to hold my hand up and say he got the big decisions right.
The Carrow Road faithful didn't let their reputation down when the penalty/freekick decision was made. We were in the N and P so obviously didn't have the best view. A a Norwich fan my first thought was that it was a penalty but when the ref gave a freekick I wasn't bothered. He had a much better view than us and the decision was going to be controversial of it was close to the line. But people around me carried on complaining. Even after the baalfntime replays showed that the ref got it exactly right!
Ruddy had a couple of saves to make, and everything he done he done without fuss and his distrubution was good. He was your best player i thought, the back 4 did ok but all apart from garrido made errors sometime during the game, i thought your midfield was pretty poor and needed somebody better to use the ball, perhaps a hoolahan, snodgrass was very ordinary and very one footed and if he continues in that vain will get found out pretty quickly, up front jackson did ok, but some of the offsides he should have been looking across the line so to get caught was criminal and holt was a shadow of the player before his pay rise. so that was why i said what i did about Ruddy.
But I still wonder why Collins wasn't dismissed. Surely with les than 18 yards to go, Surman was in a goalscoring position. I don't care if the Dagenham Girl Pipers were between him and the goal. He was in a goalscoring position.
But had that tackle not happened would he have scored? I don't think so. 18 yards is fairly far and it was quite crowded.
Its not a matter of would he. It would have been an opportunity for a Pemier League player to put his foot through the ball from 18 yards. We all think a penalty should be scored so 18 yards isn't much further. How can a binner be sent off for fouling Holt near the half way line and Collins stay that close to goal?
I think that most fans will agree the ref got the pen decision right. Where I think the perceived "injustice" comes from,is that Hoy had no idea if that tackle was or was not in the box. He had a 50/50 decision to make and went with not awarding a pen. If he had to have made that decision at Old Trafford,Emirates,Anfield etc which way would he have called it? I think we all know the answer!!
The bonnet red card was a last man issue. It's a lot easier to give a red card for a goal scoring opportunity if it's handled on the line or a player is getting ready to shoot from 7 yards. How many players would have gone for goal where Surman was? Not many. It would set a bad precedent anyway. In this case it was not a definite goals coring opportunity. When Suarez denied Gyan in the world cup that was a definite goal scoring opportunity.
Hang, let me get this right, you are moaning about a ref who got a decision right! jesus who would be a ref, they get moaned at for an incorrect decision and get moaned at for a correct decision!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Regards sending collins off, Redruth you have missed out a vital word in the ruling, it has to be a CLEAR goalscoring oppotunity, i don't think anybody can argue that surman had a clear oppotunity to score?
Ok then, I will say it. WE NEEDED A BLOODY STRIKER TO PUT THE CHANCES AWAY That chance at the end, who would you have prefered to be on the end of it. Harry Kane or James Vaughan? Since Holty is having a slow start as normal and Morison is not doing the same as last season, we are struggling upfront. Everyone knew we would, it was obvious. We NEED to start getting some more goals from midfield or Holty needs to start. We have a real hard run now and it will be interesting to see what Southampton do now that they have some easier games coming up. I think that at the moment, given our opposition and the failure to win the 2 home games against teams that will be down there is a bad sign.
lets get this straight. i thought the ref had an excellent game on saturday (no way was the collins tackle a red - he got it right, yellow) but nobody, and i do mean nobody, can say with any confidence that he didn't guess. he just happened to get it right! he had no help whatsoever from his linesman (who barely flagged for any throw in decisions let alone penalty calls!!). nevertheless, he called it right but it was a total guess and it took five replays at half time for anyone in the ground to figure out if he'd called it right or not. as for guru claiming ruddy was 'outstanding', what match were you watching exactly? he only touched the ball about four times! ok, he made two decent saves but it was the opposition keeper who was 'outstanding' - not ours. his save from jackson was breathtaking and i can't help being a little dejected that up till now jussi jaaskelainen has had a poor start to the season, yet against us he's man of the match. typical. friedal was man of the match against us too! never mind, we should have won the game with the chances we had but my god, that second half of football was dire. there was one passage of 'play' where the ball didn't touch the floor for about 60 seconds. i felt we were lowered to west ham's level to be honest as is often the case when a team is that painful to watch. stoke make us play like that too. can't understand what guru is talking about with snodgrass either - i thought he played pretty well and most of our good forward play goes through him. so what if he looked one footed (which he isn't by the way)... its what he does with the ball that matters but i will agree there were too many poor crosses, from both sides. johnson had another good game. the most pleasing thing at the moment is how secure we look defensively. barnett for me was man of the match and garrido oozes class. great signing him. we've got a very sound base to build on and i'm looking forward to seeing butterfield get a game soon as he will add another dimension going forward, while tettey (who i know very little about) should add more steel and thrust through the middle. as for holt, he does look like he's carrying timber but in the previous two games, although he hadn't scored, he'd been excellent. ignore the fact he hasn't scored because has he even had a decent chance to score this season? i can't think of a single clear cut chance that's fallen to him. he was very poor saturday though. should have been taken off early 2nd half but people who doubt the guy make me laugh... as soon as he gets that first goal he'll start firing again. he only scored 1 goal in his opening 11 last season and he ALWAYS gets better as the season progresses. nothing to worry about at the moment but he shouldn't start the next game, purely based on that last 90, as morison and definitely jackson look sharper. they should be picked on form.
Wow! A binner backing me up thanks! Exactly, whether it is Surman or Ronaldo, if they had a shot from there the chances of them scoring or even getting it on target is slim. If they were charging into the penalty area with very little in front of them and a rash tackle came in as they were lining up to shoot that is denying a goal scoring opportunity. Even then it isn't 100% clear. Where it is though is when a player handles a shot on the line as I have mentioned above with regards o Gyan and Suarez.
yep, ridiculous isn't it vaughan was a liability so people need to forget about him. we have the same number of goals up front as we did last year (i'd argue we've added more through snoddy) but the reason we aren't scoring as many is because we haven't had the rub of the green and we've missed a few chances we'd normally have tucked away. if we want to be more balanced defensively it is inevitable we will score less goals, its not rocket science. we HAD to tighten up, we have, and if that can be maintained the rest will follow...
