That second goal is horrific, the ball has traveled so far and Bassong is caught the wrong side and lets them back into the game. I would get a bollocking if I did that at the pony standard I play at! Lets be honest, we've seen almost exact examples of that from Bassong far too often and thats why he can't be a first team regular.
To be fair we were lucky to be 3 - 1 up. Newcastle could have be out of sight after the first 30 minutes.
Well we should have got rid of Bassong & Turner and bought someone else. Strange as it might seem when we went 3 - 1 up we were having our best period of the game having looked poor for the first half hour until we changed our tactics. Why oh why did we not stick with the shape and tactic we had when we were playing well. I'm not sure if we need a manger as they can't be blamed for anything when things go wrong.
Look at it however you want, we lost the game because he's a twat and doesn't learn from his mistakes. We kept attacking Burton and the game looked a whole lot better. Bassong for Bennett proves my points.
Fair comments. Problem was in sacrificing Murphy to bring on an extra (pointless, as it turned out ) defender meant we had no outlet up the field, so Newcastle knew they could play on and in our area without threat of a counter as we were so deep and had no pace on the pitch.
I'd agree with this if our defenders particularly Martin and Bassong had ever in the past demonstrated that they had the ability to see games like this out. The trouble is they've never in the last 18 months shown they had this ability especially against a team like Newcastle. Why keep using tactics that we don't have the players to implement, if it wasn't so sad it'd be laughable. AND YES THAT'S DOWN TO AN and the coaching staff.
We may have been better taking off Murphy and packing the centre of midfield, trouble is if you look at the bench we didn't have much of a defensive option other than Bennett and I think until someone tells me otherwise that who sits on the bench is definitely down to AN.
He could have got instructions to them to push out and not camp on the 6 yard line. But for well paid professional players, they should have had the savvy to work that out for themselves
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,Cardiff & Wigan we were doing well, we were ahead and looked comfortable, AN changed tactics and went defensive and nearly lost the games which we should have won comfortably. Cardiff, Wigan & Newcastle = Winning the game, looking comfortable, AN changes tactics and we go from comfortable to looking extremely fragile. If Wigan & Cardiff had been better teams or we hadn't had Klose to organise the defence, we'd have lost both games. If we're winning a game and looking comfortable WHY change tactics and deploy a tactic, especially when we know from experience that we don't have players on the pitch to see a game out. AND ONE MORE NO FOR LUCK.
I'm not convinced having Dorrans, Howson & Tettey on the pitch at the same time is a good idea, makes more sense to me to have 2 on the field and one on the bench.
Pretty accurate summary from Jerome https://www.facebook.com/NorwichCityFootballClub/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED&fref=nf
Excellent post carrow!!! I saw a tweet earlier that 7 NCFC players started ast night that capitulated 6-2 last season. WHEN is AN going to learn???????
What if..........we'd signed Dwight Gayle instead of poncing around playing - and ultimately losing out on silly bidding games trying to sign Ross McCormack?
Maybe he was just "making sure" and finding out if last season really was a fluke or not Must admit I am not convinced with AN but if we remain in the top 2 I will make do for now
Oh their second goal...it was in the air for about half of the highlights reel. Bassong had time to run to the two corner flags, kiss a ball boy, make a chip butty, a cup of tea, before getting his massive forehead on it to clear to safety. Guess he had other ideas...
I still think a fair ammount of critisim of AN for this one is unfair. We can only assume Klose was not playing because of some ailment. That leves Bass as our other left CB option. Bass must have at least had an adequate game against Everton as we kept a clean sheet. Bass vs most teams in the championship would have appeared before last night a decent option, not great but as backup certainly I thought adequate. He's had a shocker last night and I can't really defend him, but AN has the squad he has, Bass may have previous of these sort of games, but was actually the lynch pin of our defence under Neil two seasons ago when we got promoted. Bass was so poor for that second goal, I can only imagine that the wind has embarassed him, because it was so ill judged. At 94 1/2 minutes the Bennett/Murphy substitution had not seemed such a bad call. But individual errors have let him and us down again. But collectively we didn't press the ball well enough in the finale, then we didn't win first or second balls, and with Gayles winner they all just stood off him! The scorer of 2 goals and comfortably most dangerous player in the championship. If it's down to players fitness then AN has to take some blame. But tactically I'm not convinced he got it wrong last night. Newcastle were a cut above for 30-40 minutes at the start and from our 3rd goal onwards. Maybe we should have stayed as was with Hoolahoop for Tettey, our posession and threat would surely have been enhanced. But then evryone would have jumped on him for not learning from last time. I think it was in the end what it was, a display that they certainly have more quality than us. Without Klose, we are a playoff side at best. Whilst at times it looked like we could get thrashed we didn't and I think allot of other clubs would have been in the face of that Newcs performance Hugely disappointing that we could not hold out from that position. But if AN had any doubts about our requirements for defensive reinforcements then I don't think he can deny it any longer. Bah!
I would say Sunday league defending - but that would be an insult to all who play in their local park at weekends
Why didn't he start with Bennett and Martin? Bennett and Klose are widely accepted as our best CB pairing so why change both because of an injury to one? Your point 4 above is spot on GM - and I hope AN and Alan Irving are busy compiling an 'xmas' shopping short list as we speak.
