We don't expect the things youre suggesting. Hughton has attempted to shore up our defence this year at the expense of our free scoring ability from last year. He hasn't got the balance right however. We've lost most of our attacking threat for marginal defensive gain. 2011-2012 7th ranked attack, 16th ranked defence 2012-2013 18th ranked attack, 13th ranked defence. This season we've failed to score in over a third of our games. This is a sad inevitability when the team doesnt get a shot on target for entire games. We signed a striker to address this in January and then didn't play him. (there may be a good reason for this but without any clues it doesn't inspire confidence or solve the teams goal drought) What most of us would like (i think) is for Hughton to recheck his formula, and balance our offensive and defensive focus better, so that the club doesnt need to be clawing for survival at the end of next season, and as fans we can get to see some exciting football again on a more regular basis.
We protected the back 4 by not letting the other team have the ball or build momentum today. That's what we want to see, not protecting the back 4 by putting 5 in front of them and dropping deep. The freedom that Snodgrass, pilks and wes played with as well as the license Howson had to join in made us a joy to watch. As soon as the wingers stop interchanging and keeping the full backs guessing we become predictable and start lumping it forward. We came up against a team playing 4-3-3 with a £20m striker in that and they had one shot in the first half because we didn't let them build any momentum. I think the organisation of the defence has been admirable but we've just done so much defending it at times became horrendous viewing. I'm sure it'll get better as this kind of performance is the kind which should give him more faith to unleash our better attacking players.
Beefy, you are a child. Grow up. Btw, with regard to another of your puerile posts, I think there is one person on here who would like Holloway. I definitely would not. I still think we need to consider the season as a whole, and Hughton's performance during the season, and whether he is the best way forward, but today is not the time for it. Let's all just enjoy the moment.
Hughton has done what he has needed to do to get us over the line, I'm sure he really appreciates people like you sniping him constantly but none of that matters now because he's absolutely done you. Hughton in, Hughtons yellow army, heres to a bright future. Hope you "Enjoy the moment" I mean, you've earned it.
12 Norwich City 38 12 11 15 52 66 −14 47 12 Norwich City 37 9 14 14 38 56 -18 41 One game to go, are we really that much worse than we were last season? And how many games did we win towards the back end of last season or did we have a 10 game unbeaten run last season? I have been to every home and away game bar two and i can pick at least 4 of those draws out that we should have won. We didnt win them because of the strike force or dodgey decision not because the gaffer said to the players with 70 minutes on the clock "hey boys settle for draw will ya" Some of the football has been a pleasure to watch and some has not, but last season was the same but the difference was we were all so pleased to be in the priemer league last season that lamberts bad games were over looked. OTBC
Totally this! Most reports are playing the WBA didn't turn up line and maybe up to a point that was true but the fact that City took the game to them from the first whistle right until the last gave the Baggies little chance to make a good game of it. Their defence became visibly shaky in the second half and that was more to do with how we were playing and not their minds on the Costa Del Sol
Look across the division and you'll see that not many teams have played good football this season, so you must be saying that. Let me tell you, Newcastle, Sunderland, Fulham, West Brom (even), Wigan (for the most part), QPR, Villa, West Ham, Reading etc have all had there fair share of shocking performances. To be frank, I doubt I'll ever see a Chris Hughton team give up at 2-0 and concede 6 at home because they can't be arsed to try. Attacking wise, do you think Holt has another 15 goal season in him? If you look them up, the strike rate stats will undoubtedly suggest last season was an anomaly, just as when I looked up Cisse's his were. So Chris was always on a hiding to nothing there, especially as Holt spat his dummy out early season and wanted to leave . The guy scored a ridiculous proportion of your goals last year, taking his away and you'd have been in the exact same boat last year. The Wolf will be so much better, I don't think you can possibly comprehend. Unfortunately, teams have off days and don't perform, and unfortunately you'll be clawing for survival every year most likely until financial fair play has some teeth. Getting to that magic 40-44 will always be imperative for your club, but surely style will be improved by staying in the division (and getting more money) with a manager working from the ground up (and has thus far in his career), rather than hounding him out because he hasn't delivered your dream in one season? If you glance over the season's results, you've had some outstanding ones that should get more merit than they do at the cost of some of the weaker ones. Kindly point me to results a Newcastle fan can be proud of... Oh yeah, one... We beat Chelsea... It's all about context, and I really don't think those with an axe to grind against Hughton understand the context. Precisely!
its been a tricky one as last year we had good results interspersed with the bad. This year we had an amazingly consistent good run before christmas with the subsequent praise and adoration heaped on Hughton. Now we've had a very consistent bad run since christmas and so the judgements of Hughton have 'auto corrected' so to speak, to the other extreme. When we're winning the decisions are all the right ones, and we all ignore the more curious decisions. When we lose a lot those odd choices become much more contentious. I think hughton will strengthen us now and already has (RVW) and we will (hopefully) not see any more games with zero shots on target next year.
I have little doubt that if we had not had the good spell followed by the bad one, i.e. results were a little more mixed up, most fans would not have been so vocal in their displeasure, it was only the fact that the last 20 games have generally been dreadful that have brought about the annoyance.
I think you are out of line by saying we have an axe to grind with Hughton. You are out of context. We were unhappy with the football that he served up for so many weeks after some stirring performances that had got us into the top 10. You seem a bit of a condescending snob to be honest. You support Newcastle who are a big club and you have the remedy for Norwich who are a small club. As if we should be lucky we have any manager let alone Chris Hughton. It is all about results and what happens each game. The Binners come on here reminding us they have won so much. Well Luton have won a major trophy and look where they are now. Newcastle are only as big and good as their results and that means they have struggled this season. By Christmas, we were looking to move on, there was talk of Europe even on here, and relegation wasn't a word in our vocabulary. For some reason, Chris Hughton decided that wee then could defend our way through the remainder of the season. It was only yesterday that he realised that tactic wass so wrong that he HAD to win a match, not draw and hope the other results went our way. And as much as WBA looked off colour, we didn't let them settle at all, we played high tempo, and we progressed up the pitch. Our fourth goal personified the day's proceedings. Howson pops up chasing a knock on from a clearance to Becchio, he gives it back, takes the return and thunders in a screamer. Up until yesterday, Howson would not have looked for a return from Becchio. He would have let him get on with it on his own and made sure he covered midfield. You don't have to have lots of skillful foreigners in your side to produce good football. The playerrs showed yesterday that they have enough to be competitive in this league. Of course they won't challenge for honours. And at Norwich we accept that. But many of us reason that if we can't win anything there is nothing stopping us playing good, attacking, progressive football. So if we don't like what we see, we say so. There is no mass chanting for the manager to be sacked unlike many at the Etihad no doubt. But we don't have to accept that dire, defensive football please us and we will accept any fayre served up. And apart from one or two fools, we don't go stirring it on other club's boards either. We are what we are. Our supporters are quite happy to wave little yellow clacky things rather than sing racist songs. They will applaud somebody winning a corner instead of calling him a ****er for not scoring. And nearly 22K turned up to watch our academy boys in the final. My suggestion is that people stay on their own boards instead of making disparaging remarks about genuine and long standing Norwich supporters who have been unhappy for the last few weeks but never given up despite expecting the worst.
a) So I'm delusional to want my team to play good football, which we did last season with practically the same players! b) I never expected us to play like Barcalona etc, but did reasonably expect us to have the occasional attack and shot on goal. c) What did I expect? Read b) and finishing 12/13/14th. d) I know Norwich are well run, I've supported them since 1959, so I don't really need a lecture on that. e) So you know why Paul Lambert left us do you? Perhaps you could enlighten us because it's never been revealed. Just some rumours about unpaid bonus's! f) My Yellow bubble has been pricked so many times this season it's a wonder it's still inflated. g) If you call progression, just scraping enough points to avoid relegation, having NO attacking intent and frequently NO shots on goal in many games, then I suggest YOU are delusional! I heard your manager bleating yesterday about how they are a BIG team, and if you hadn't had injuries you would have finished in the top 6/8. Delusional or what! We've been without our International goalkeeper for most of the season, centre back's injured etc, you know just the normal things that happen in a season! Chris Hughton to his credit hasn't moaned about it, he has actually done something about it!
Excellent post ILD. My gripe is that the 10 oufield players that started yesterday are not significantly different to the ones who started against Stoke, yet their approach to the game was as different as could be and our wingers and forwards seemed to adopt the belief that 'attack is the best form of defence!!!' WHAT HAS CAUSED THIS TRANSFORMATION????
Ronald Reagan once said "Today, we did what we had to do" - that summary not only applied to yesterday's glorious result (and performance) but to the season in general. This eason was all about survival - staying up - and CH "did what he had to do" and that was keep us up. A lot of what we have seen recently has been turgid gush and really unpalatable but it got us vital points - the games against The Nukes, Fulham and The Saints at home were painful to watch and a complete dichotomy to what we saw yesterday but ... in the scheme of things those three points gained in those dull, drab, soulless goalless dras could be the difference between staying up and going down. We showed yesterday what we can do when we can combine meaningful attack with a mean defence - ok Albion were disinterested and offered little resistance but the way we swarmed all over them like angry wasps was enough to put off even the most committed sides and that set the scene for a magnificent performance. I'm sure that CH knows what, and who, is needed to cement our status next year - he looked almost pleased at the end of the game with a wry smile on his face - now he has "done what he had to do" he has a whole close season (something he didn't have last year) to planand prepare for the seaon to come. Despite the frustration of recent weeks /months , the relief and elation yesterday was tangible and I am graeteful that Hughton "did what he had to do". OTBC - always and forever.
I am sort of in both camps here.Some of our football,maybe most of it,has quite frankly been dire.The contrast with last year has been quite stark.Under Lambert we attacked at times to the point of recklesness and you can see this heritage in Villa's results.Mountainous losses,a 6-1 win against Sunderland,a 0-3 away to Liverpool. Hughton is cautious and defence minded and he has kept us up.But I for one don't want to watch this year after year.I know we knock MOTD for putting us on last but to be honest there hasn't really been much for them to show. But it has been his first season and not his team.I think the knockers are knocking him too much and his defenders defending him too robustly.Give him another season,he deserves that.If it's the same next season then we obviously need to review things.
Before this season started I posted here that IMO if Chris Hughton managed to keep us in the Premier League it would be an achievement to match anything Paul Lambert did in his time with us. I stand by every word of that. He has taken a lot of quite unjustified stick on here while delivering the only thing he was asked to deliver, survival. It is easy for people who don't have the responsibility of accumulating league points to say that we would have survived just as well, or more easily, by playing the sort of football we played yesterday. That's their opinion -- and like many opinions a comfortable one to hold, since it can never be tested and shown true or false. Many of these same posters write as though they actually know what Chris Hughton's instructions are to his players, match by match. There is a sort of concensus that the manager has put shackles on the players and actually forbidden them to engage in attacking football, etc. etc. In consequence, they explain yesterday's performance by saying that CH freed them of the shackles and Hey, Presto! a great display of attacking football and a thumping for the Albion. I don't know how anybody can seriously believe that. On the contrary, IMO yesterday's performance was exactly the kind of performance CH has been wanting from day one of the season, but which for a whole variety of reasons has been largely lacking since the defeat at Albion just before Christmas. I find it odd that some of those who are most vociferous about their support of the club, can't seem to accept that the overriding consideration this season, the single thing that mattered most in the context of the long term interests of Norwich City Football Club, was survival. To complain about the sometimes dire football we have endured in our successful quest is to lose sight of what really mattered, and to put a fan's enjoyment and personal satisfaction above the interests of the club. If people would rather see NCFC a comfortable Championship side playing nice attacking football, that's their prerogative. To put Chris Hughton's achievement into proper perspective you only need to look at other clubs who have had far more resources poured into them, have been managed by far more experienced people than Hughton, whose squads have had considerably greater strength in depth, yet have struggled even more than we have and have in the end at best done marginally better, or have just matched us, or in some cases failed. Speaking for myself, I look forward to next season with great confidence. We have a manager who knows what he is doing and what he needs to do, whose aim is to play attractive, attacking football from the base of a sound defence (in the tradition of the Spurs sides of which he was part for many years), and who, for the first time in decades as far as NCFC are concerned, is managing a club which has serious money to spend on strengthening the squad. If people can't be content with that, I give up.
robbieBB Very correct and well said. We also have a manager that is not looking for the next big step and actually will be loyal to NCFC (welll unless the tottenham job gets offered - and who would blame him)
it's been a tough year, with what happened last summer we should have expected it. a lot of poeple have short-term memories, i'm one of them, especially after the good first half of the season. i heard chris on talkshite after the game talking to collymore, and for once he sounded upbeat, good on him, and about our plans for the summer. a very well done Chris anyone got adrian durham's number? And shearer too
Well said, Robbie, and to answer Zellery's question, at this time last year we were on the end of a miserable run of 2 wins, 3 draws and 8 defeats, scoring 14 goals and conceding 27! In the equivalent 13 matches this year, we have won 3, drawn 5 and lost 5, scoring 13 goals and conceding 16. The adrenalin had run out at the end last year, and except for the win at Spurs and the draw at Arsenal, the football was pretty dire as well with a defence leaking like a sieve. PL realized that and knew how hard it would be to do anything about it. So he left, leaving CH to pick up the pieces. Add to that a drop in form for Holt as the season went on, the alienation of Morison, and the lack of goals for Jackson and Chris Martin, I have to ask where this sparkling attacking football was to come from. CH tried hard to sign RvW and then Hooper, but had to settle for Kamara and Becchio because we were priced out of the market. Form in football is difficult to identify precisely (it's not an exact science), but I don't accept this idea that CH 'sucked the confidence out of the players', or dictated that they play 'defensively' at all costs'. There are times when players lose confidence. It happened last year and it has happened this year. PL has three excellent attacking players in Benteke, Wieman, and Agbonlahor and yet they are still a point below us in the table with some pretty dire results (like 8-0 to Chelsea) along the way. I do believe next year will be better because we will have better attacking options and strengthening elsewhere.
Seems entirely accurate to me, I feel that the squad is building and that better football will be on display next season. CH has done what he needed to do. NEXT SEASON WE ARE IN PL AND WILL HAVE A BETTER SQUAD!
