We seem to be hanging on to the January Transfer thread for ongoing discussion of the season, so I thought a new thread concentrating on our last 15 games might be in order. The current squad of 23 players includes four loanees (Gunn, Reed, Leitner and Edwards) but not the eight senior players out on loan (McLean, Martin, Franke, Naismith, Godfrey, Wildschut, Morris and Jones). It's a smaller squad than of late, but it's what we have for the rest of the season minus Trybull's lengthy injury. The recent run of results is encouraging, both for points and the quality of performances, only blotted by the post Chelsea loss to Sheffield United. With three new players in and Edwards yet to feature, there is hopefully further potential to come. We've now had a first good view of what Leitner could add as a deep playmaker and it was encouraging. He seems to have settled in quickly and his interplay with Maddison was impressive. The cameos by Hernandez and Srbeny have been tantalising, but not much to go on yet. Based on all of that my guess is that we could finish around 9th or 10th, though if Hernandez and Srbeny turn out to be hidden gems, it could be higher.
It's not over until the fat lady sings Rick, if we beat the Binmen on Sunday and get some kind of result at Wolves you just never know we just might go on to sneak into the play-offs by the back door .................. then I woke up
It seem every year a mid table championship has a good run at the end of the season ans just sneaks into the play offs. This year it could just be us.
Unless we improve our goals scored which is exactly 31 in 31 games we will have to keep clean sheets in most if not all of the final games . We have averaged 1.4 points per game so far this will have to improved upon dramatically.
To make the playoffs you need roughly 75 points (give or take) which means another 31 points in the next 16 games, which would be some run of form to be averaging 2 points per game. We gave up any hope some time ago (mainly because we're bloody awful) but realistically there are just too many teams between both of us and the playoffs that they'd all (roughly 8) have to fall off a cliff for someone to sneak in from this far back in the pack.
With the cheapest S/T renewal date approaching this Sunday, I'd suggest this sudden upturn in form will convince a few doubters to shell out once again. https://www.canaries.co.uk/News/2018/february/season-ticket-first-deadline/
It happened under Worthy and again under AN, but it still seems to be a long shot. I agree with Scowey about needing around 75 points, and the only way I can see that happening is Oliveira getting back to goal scoring and the new players turning out to be great acquisitions as well.
I'm sure I read somewhere that we now have 12 clean sheets and this year, we have scored 7 goals and conceded 4 with 2 clean sheets in 6 games and averaged 2.17 points per game. I'll be extremely surprised if we finish higher than 8th, but with the apparent togetherness of the team, I think we could JUST sneak a result a week tonight. Edit - If you look at the last 8 games, we have 4 clean sheets and have scored 9 goals!!!
With the defence being much tighter now, a few more goals going in could see us continue the good run. Derby have one of the best defenses and yet Curtis Davies' tweet commented on how difficult it was for them to defend against our attacking players. There could be several reasons for this. Leitner's excellent distribution (90% pass success rate) meant that we got the ball forward much more quickly and he and Maddison produced a lot of movement, switching over at times to confuse the defence. The WBs popping up unexpectedly helped as well. Even Klose has been given licence to get forward to support the attack either by accurate balls into the box, like the one that provided Lewis's goal against Chelsea, or getting into the box for headers. The challenge will be to keep up the consistency over the final fifteen games. http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter...ave-ourselves-a-gem-if-only-for-three-months/
The schedule is rather kind for the rest of the season. We play at Wolves and have Fulham, Villa and Cardiff at Carrow Road. With help from floundering Leeds on Sunday we could be 5 pts out of the playoff positions. Of the top 6, only BC look like moving back to the pack. Unfortunately, we don't play them again. I think by the end of March we will be looking good for a playoff spot. We play Fulham on 3-30, though. That could be a very big game if all goes well. April is a tough month as we take on Villa and Cardiff and go to PNE. It would break my heart if AN's team ruined our chances. I realize this is somewhat optimistic thinking.
Nothing wrong with a hint of optimism, when 2 months ago we were closer to relegation than a top 10 finish!!! Edit - As I mentioned on another thread, there is a 'quiet optimism' permeating the Archant hacks/MFW contributors and dare I say it - posters on here.
Football supporters thrive on hope, CS. 'If only' becomes a recurring theme and sometimes actually comes off. Many other times it doesn't. That's part of sport really. I will go on calculating how many points we need until we're mathematically eliminated from a play-off place. I don't expect it to happen, but I like the possibility that it might. That's also part of sport really. You've convinced me to go look at our remaining fixtures and how they might go - just in case.
Shhhh. RB is our only weak area we couldn't strengthen. If it wasn't for missing out on a 2nd choice RB, we'd score a sh*t load more goals. Just unfortunate we missed out on the only player in the only position we needed to strengthen. Otherwise, we'd bag over 1 goal a game, I am sure. From that 2nd choice RB signing. Would have solved our main problem of scoring goals in one swoop. They tried their best to sort out our lack of goals with a back up RB, but he went to a Champions League team. So we need to find some other RB who can score 20 goals a season. I'm sure there is one in the German 5th Division.
For those who don't want to look up our remaining fixtures, here they are: Sun Feb 18 Ipswich Town (12pm) H please log in to view this image Wed Feb 21 Wolverhampton Wanderers (7.45pm) A Sat Feb 24 Bolton Wanderers H Sat Mar 3 Barnsley A Tue Mar 6 Nottingham Forest (7.45pm) H Sat Mar 10 Hull City A Sat Mar 17 Reading H Fri Mar 30 Fulham H Mon Apr 2 Queens Park Rangers A Sat Apr 7 Aston Villa H Tue Apr 10 Sunderland (7.45pm) A Sat Apr 14 Cardiff City H Sat Apr 21 Preston North End A Sat Apr 28 Leeds United H Sun May 6 Sheffield Wednesday (12.30pm) A Like CS says, they offer a reasonable degree of hope for improving our position and even possibly pushing into the play-offs places. I still don't think it will happen, but the fact that it could will keep me calculating until all hope is gone.
I foolishly bought an 'over 65' ticket in the lower River End for the Florists game, forgetting I'd be on holiday. If anyone wants it for free, please message me.
