Negativity is no problem in my book as long as it's reasoned and logical, what makes me bury my head in my hands is the posts like 'Oh my god we are so terrible this is pathetic players x, y and z should be dropped they have been rubbish what is poche doing this is atrocious sort it out you idiots blah blah'. Fair enough these posts are more often that not born out of frustration during or shortly after a match, but they still are usually a signal for me to take my leave from the forums for a few hours at least, or at worst a few days.
Those posts never bother me because im usually frustrated and irrational after a loss and can understand why people are making the worst out of a quite good situation. Not a great example but when redmond scored i was pissed off it wasnt called offside, that thought only lasted a second but i can see why people post such crazy things and can usually have a laugh about it.
I've only finally just got round to watching MotD... That handball... Wow. Words fail me. We better get some kind decisions from refs soon or the conspiracy theories are going to be in full flow.
Ok this is probably not a great comparison as was in NPC but under adkins I felt we learned a lot from our defeats. Blue line and all that. Im not including the start of last season as the whole team was finding its feet. Do you think we have the same on depth analysis under Poch and are we learning as much as quickly? Its not an adkins better than poch post just a thought and one that only the players could really answer.
And we should have had a penalty on the foul on Snodgrass, both were stonewall penalties. Guess you could say it evened itself out, Although Lambert clearly wasn't offside, but Ruddy saved it anyway.
I chose a good game to miss. I didn't see any of it; hear any radio commentary or read any live reports. I've seen the excellent save from Johnson, the goal and Adam hitting the post, so I can't really make a comment about selections, tactics, performances or anyone's posts.
Exactly what I thought. In answer to an earlier Q, yes, I think MP is a better manager at this level than NA. No question (for me).
Think the annoyance isn't entirely based on the result -- you were the better side, full stop, and the Snodgrass/Fonte incident was absolutely a penalty -- so much as the fact that it came after a couple games that also featured really poor officiating. First game of the year, we had a goal ruled out for offside that was well and truly incorrect (assuming that they were flagging the player who scored), and the second was a complete debacle...some of it benefited us, some benefited Sunderland, but all of it was terrible. Poor calls are an unfortunate reality, but we've managed to have three consecutive games where the refs blew almost all of the big decisions.
Fonte's foul at the end may not have happened if we'd been given that nailed on penalty earlier on. Goals change games.
Yes........ to be fair though Norwich edged it as you would expect a home team to do. I still cannot get my head round the statistics that are being bandied around about our possession in yesterday's game. A 58% possession rate would suggest a high dominance. Yet reports from fans that were there seem to dispute this. If it is any where near true it would suggest we have a massive weakness somewhere.....especially with 15 shots and only 2 on target!!!!!! Unless of course the stats themselves leave a lot to be desired of course?
I managed to find a really good stream for the match so I got to watch it all. It wasn't an enjoyable game at all I thought, we didn't seem to be able to stamp any authority on it or express ourselves the way we have been and I'm not sure if that's down to Norwich playing well or Saints having an off-day. No doubt we were denied a stonewall penalty but I'm not sure that would have made much of a difference, we weren't at it, Norwich could have been ahead by that stage already in a half they completely dominated. We didn't appear to have a plan 'b' and it didn't exactly fill me with confidence to see Gaston coming on. I really wish we had kept hold of Puncheon because he always comes on and becomes a constant threat. I don't think Rodriguez should have been on the bench either but that's what happens when you make marquee signings like Osvaldo (who I thought played ok actually). We're still in good shape and it was encouraging that we seemed really hard to break down and showed resilience yet again. Like I said at the beginning though, it wasn't a good game to watch.
Positive thging is the defence bar the first few mins against Sunderland is looking firm. The goals will come!
Yeah, Lovren looks a great buy. Just hope we can sort the balance at the other end, because its just not happening at the moment.