Ben Lee's latest piece analysing Wagner's tactical approach (Stoke apart): https://ncfcanalysis1.wixsite.com/n...mail&cid=45255931-e55d-4154-848a-d721de373dcc
Though recent results have been disappointing, the challenge lies in getting the tactics embued into the players as Rangnick says about the job of a head coach: “to have a clear idea of how their team should play” and “to transform this idea of football into the heads, hearts, brains, veins of their players”. Ben says that "there is no doubt that Wagner has done exactly that", but it still needs to become instinctive, like Burnley showed and the best PL teams show on a weekly basis. Hopefully the international break will have provided more time for this. The tactics are right, it's now up to the players to make them work.
Most likely estimate would be 20,000. We have quite a few season ticket holders on here. How many of you would give up your tickets? Rob?
I'm interested to know what you mean exactly when you say "the tactics are right", Rick. Since Dean Smith was said to be "pragmatic" and leave the players with no idea of what they should be doing from game to game, and the supporters completely unable to discern what the tactics in any given game were, you might think that would give a base line against which to measure David Wagner's supposedly very different approach. But if results are, as I keep being told, the only measure that really matters, if you compare DS's results with DW's against the same teams, DS comes out marginally better (13 games played, DS 23 points, DW 21 points). What are we to make of that?
I've never considered results to be "the only measure that really matters". I wasn't anti Smith, but the quality of play lacked purpose or direction towards the end of his time. Wagner is still instilling his more complex tactics, but IMO the players are on board with the style of play and trying to make it work. The injuries to Dowell and Hernandez have hurt overall play. Neither Idah or Tzolis look comfortable with the role they are playing. Marquinhos is still settling in to the team and tactics and that has affected his play as well. The basic difference for me is that Wagner has a clear concept of where he wants to go and how to make it work whereas after a year of Smith I didn't feel that was the case. In the summer, Wagner will have the chance to work with Webber to get the new players he needs, much as he did at Huddersfield. I'd rather that than fluke promotion through the playoffs and then be ground down in the PL yet again.
I completely agree. I think it’s worth pointing out before people go wild that Smith also had clear ideas and a vision at the beginning. But that fizzled out - and it might fizzle out with Wagner too but I feel like the timing is better.
I'm starting to move on this. I was definitely in the camp that would like to go up even if it meant another dire PL season simply because of the money it would bring and the financial risks of failing to go up next season and the end of parachute payments. However, if we go up, I don't see how we can slowly develop young players like Sara, Nunez, Omo, Gibbs, Tzolis, Mumba, Rowe, Springett, Kamara, Tomkinson, which we maybe could do as a Championship side and hope for a good second half of the season. As I've said elsewhere, our club looks tired - owners, hierarchy, players, fans - and maybe we should all be put out of our misery asap as far as this season is concerned.
The reality of being a self-funding club is that the money we have has to be spent wisely and that hasn't been the case much of the time. When Webber first arrived, he focused on buying promising young players like Godfrey, Lewis and Maddison to develop through the academy. We did that, then sold them for big money which was spent on players who seldom lived up to the prices paid, sacrificing the the squad building of young, hungry players in the process. There were some successes like Pukki on a on a free and Buendia for £1.5m, rising to £5m after promotion, but they were the exception. There were too many others on expensive loans or big money buys who had little or no commitment to the club and that played out on the pitch. We sold Cameron Morris for peanuts because he didn't fit the style of play and then spent a lot more on Hugill, who, well, never suited the style of play. Time will tell on Sara and Núñez if we miss promotion and big money clubs close in. I agree with Gozo that the club seems tired and going through the motions. Wagner arrived full of ideas and energy but even those have been dulled by the general mood of despondency. Maybe just changing the head coach isn't enough. Getting hungry players who suit his style of play will be the key, but that can't begin until the summer.
Not only did Smith have clear ideas and a vision at the beginning, those ideas and vision were strikingly close to Wagner's -- e.g. the emphasis on pressing high, compressing play into the opposition third, resulting in quick ball recovery and thence chance creation (in Jurgen Klopp's words "no playmaker in the world can be as good as a good counter-pressing situation”). All this in marked contrast to Farke's preference for gaining possession via a low block then building slowly from the back. There was a tantalising glimpse of what Smith envisaged in the pre-season win against Marseilles, pretty much the first and only time we've ever seen Norwich press a team out of a game. Yes, it "fizzled out"; the question is why? The answer to that surely holds the key to whether "it might fizzle out with Wagner too". The approach adopted at Stoke was the antithesis of virtually everything Wagner has said about how he wants us to play. Maybe the fizzling out has already started.
Bit ambiguous but, to be quite clear, Webber had nothing to do with the recruitment of any of those three. They were all already our players when Webber joined in April 2017 (Lewis joined our academy in 2014, Godfrey was signed in January 2016, and Maddison in February 2016).
If it is fizzling out so quickly, you're right, the question is why? When Wagner came in, still a very short time ago, he seemed like he wanted to be the exciting new broom which swept clean. The first few games even suggested he might be. But now, as you say, not long after, he seems to be adopting an approach which is the opposite of everything he was espousing. Still largely talking the talk, but hardly walking the walk. Is Webber insisting that his Head Coach adopt this style? This is pure speculation on my part, I admit, and I find it hard to believe. Surely if he wanted to impose this style on his HC, there would have been other appointments he could have made of managers closer to his desired style. Also, it's debatable whether Webber is in a strong enough position to impose anything on his HC at the moment, given his woeful performance over the last eighteen months, even if he wanted to (and his previous relationship with Wagner suggests that he has enough respect for him not to want to). Is it that Wagner, perhaps like Smith, has decided that the existing squad is not capable of adopting the style he wants and is cutting his suit to fit his cloth? But if so, he seems to be finding out, as Smith did before him, that this halfway house is the worst of all worlds. I honestly have no idea what is happening, except for a feeling that the decline hasn't stopped and we're more or less back where we were when Neil left, at least on the pitch.
Sorry, surely it's blatantly obvious to those with functioning corneas that the squad isn't up to much!? Clearly not to Webber either but there we are. We play Sargent & Adam Ali offside-eah out of position, to accommodate Pukki. That said Idah is nowhere near good enough to be a first choice striker in the first place, nor is he an AML/R, due to this Sara has to play much deeper than he should. There's no dummy runs or movement up top. McLean is no Tettey, something we've missed for countless seasons, someone to make a crunching tackle, use some strength to win the ball back. We have an over valued and rated Gibson who should be no higher than 3rd choice and Hanley who's heading towards the twilight of his career, same as Maguire - plays well most of the time but is likely to have a shocker every few games.
