first of all, good article carrabuh - really enjoyed reading it. agree with some parts, disagree with others, so i think i find myself somewhere in the middle. we would all love to see a more progressive style of football played at carrow road but we were promoted via league one and there are still aspects of the club which are taking some time to be deemed 'premier league worthy'. this can be seen both on the pitch and off it. what i mean by this is that we have a style of play which has had to be adapted quickly - our progress through the leagues was so rapid, we never had a chance to find an identity on the field. teams such as swansea have been forming their formula over the past six or seven years. man united have been creating their style for the last 25 years! we have been forming ours over the last 4 months! if you want to include lambert then its a mere 4 years and our style has gone backwards and forwards. our current manager has quite rightly focused much of his attention on our shaky defence during the summer months - this is what all good managers focus on first. by making us solid and harder to beat, capable of taking points when playing poorly (such as saturday), we're giving ourselves a base to build on. once we know we are difficult to beat we can improve other areas. it's not as if we can click our fingers and magic up a new team, full of continental flair who keep the ball like spain do. these things take years and work both on and off the pitch, years and years to perfect. we've had no time, no time at all to do anything like what you want. i think anyone who wants to see this by say, the start of next season is asking for something impossible. however, if you want it in three years time then i'd say that's possible. what it requires is patience and understanding, something lacking from many football fans these days. as i've said many times before, we do not have an expansive scouting network. we will do - but for the time being, we are more aware of players closer to home than those in europe, so if you want a batch of 'michu's' then you're supporting the wrong club right now. what we need to do is what we've been doing this season. battling hard and trying to stay up, no matter what means are used to do so. the riches achieved through staying up this year are the most important thing - entertainment is not. that was hughton's brief pre-season and it will still be his brief. if that isn't for you then i'm afraid you're best off staying at home and not watching us this season because the be all and end all this year is survival. there is no quick fix. neither, i have to say, is there the need for some radical overhaul in playing staff. what IS needed is a steady increase in quality. maybe one or two in january who improve the team, then maybe four more in the summer and let the weaker players move on. if we suddenly tried to change everything overnight we would go down - absolutely no question whatsoever. a steady increase in quality will naturally lead to a steady increase in style. better footballers play better football. if the manager has better footballers to call upon, he can play to a better style. i don't personally feel our style is poor. it can look devoid of inspiration at times but that all leads back to what we have on our books. the manager can only pick the players he has at the club! you can't make bradley johnson play like zinedine zidane BUT you can make bradley johnson play like a premier league footballer, one who can keep our heads above water. he can't pass the ball like zidane but he gets through his work and does his best for the team, and this season, he's performed very well. and that is what we need right now - OUR players playing to the best of their abilities in whatever style is necessary. check out who our buddies qpr are buying. they're on the verge of buying two players who were wanted by some massive clubs last summer. are they good footballers? damn right they are! are they playing well this season? no, no they are not! in fact, remy has been dreadful this year - m'villa even worse. both have off field problems and so despite being far more talented than any of our players will likely make little difference to qpr other than annoy the hard working players on small wages and give as little effort as possible for their vast sums of money. one thing we DO have at our club is the sort of characters who WILL keep us in the premier league this season. what i'm saying is its all about balance. getting the balance right is the hard part. it takes time to create a style and even teams like swansea last season were an absolute bore to watch as they just passed the ball across the back four all game. one half vs villa last season they had no forward passes in their opponents half for an entire 45 minutes of football. is that exciting? not for me, no thanks! we are different - we are more direct and play with width. are man united boring to watch? the reason i ask is because we play a similar style to them. they play long balls forward quickly, they use width, they scrap about if they need to. the major difference is that their team cost about £200m to assemble, ours was £20m! there is no right or wrong way to play the game. some are more pleasing on the eye but not everyone enjoys carrabuh's favourite style of football. some far prefer to see pace, strength, good crossing and battling qualities. i personally like both styles if carried out to perfection but perfection is difficult to achieve and if you think norwich city are going to formulate perfection then you may be waiting sometime. what they can do, right here, right now, is keep our club in the top flight so it gets the riches on offer so we can build the club into what everyone wants it to be. it requires patience. i'm not sure enough of our fans are patient enough...
Something else I meant to point out a while ago - Swansea built their current philosophy basically on players who came all the way up through the leagues with them, often through their youth team. We don't yet have the luxury of first-team youth players, and in the time they've had 3 managers we've had about 6 (I think). Things have been changing for us. Swansea have been creating players to fit into their system, which meant that until this year they never really spent serious money on players. Even now, they're only getting quality loan players because of Laudrup. For an example, see Ben Davies. Came in as a youth player this season, and comfortably replaced Neil Taylor because he fits their system. Our equivalent? George Francomb? We would have to buy one. There's your difference. Hopefully that will change over the next few years, I'm hearing positive things about the way our youth development has been managed under Hughton and the new academy rules will help.
i gather hughton is extremely impressed with our current batch of youngsters. one or two of them are not a million miles away from making the odd sub appearance in the premier league. i've not seen too much of the youth team this season but what i have seen excites me more than any other batch we've had for a while.
The playing of youngsters has always been a problem for clubs like ourselves. I remember going back to the 60's that the club tried to play youngsters but if results didn't go our way, they were dropped for the old pros whose poor play had led to the youngsters being blooded in the first place. Through the decades there has been an attempt to do it and I think Martin O'Neill looked to be the first NCFC manager who might be prepared to say damn the torpedoes, these guys are going to play. Mike Walker had a stab at it as well. However, anybody who was talented got sold on. Suck it up, that's the kind of club we are. But in recent memory, the youngsters have not been able to progress beyond lower Championship level. But if we do establish ourselves in the Prem, I see no reason why the new batch can't be filtered in somewhere and given the opportunity to prove they are up to it. If they train and practise with better players, then that is better than the equivalent with League 1 players as Smith and Adeyemi had to.
you're right. o'neill in his first game gave debuts to danny mills and ade akinbiyi. now i didn't particularly rate either player at the time but they certainly went on to have decent careers! but someone had to give them a chance and they were raw and exciting to a degree. i saw a lot of the previous generation (ie smith, adeyemi, rudd) and i never got the feeling any would be stars - adeyemi was the standout for me but its smith who has done better - i think we've seen he is a very capable player and will probably end up being a mainstay in the championship throughout his career. no one really leapt out though. this lot however, obviously the murphy twins are grabbing many of the headlines but jamar loza up front is very exciting and my particular favourite is michael clunan who oozes class on the ball and is a real fighter. we can include steer and francomb in this group who i both believe will end up being decent players, possibly both for city. credit must go to scott marshall who has made great inroads so far - his arrival has lifted some of these lads and i think improved them tremendously. he works behind the scenes and doesn't get too much credit but i'll give him some here!
The problem to some of us is that of late we have become, like West Ham and Stoke, very one dimensional. Push it wide for a winger to thump it into the middle. Play for a set piece and them lump it into the middle. Push it into the midfield and then lump it up the middle. Looking back the pre-season friendlies gave an indication of the way things were going. To be fair I do not think it is the way CH wants to play but he has had to deal with the players at his disposal and his first priority was to tighten up at the back including more steel in the defensive midfield area. It just seems that many supporters now accept this is the route we have got to continue going down hence the call for more wingers and more strikers. Including Chris Martin, if you must, we already have 4 big strikers for the 1 place in our 4-4-1-1 so why do we need another one unless we are going to continue with this style of play and formation? People often call for David Fox to be recalled not for his skill and football brain but because he can lump a long ball forward more accurately than others. It will take a while to develop but it has got to start with the Academy producing more technically gifted youngsters who are then given a chance. Even the biggest Clubs, not just Arsenal, start giving promising youngsters games at 18 or 19 and they are permanent squad members at 20 or 21. Look at our so called promising youngsters Korey Smith, Adeyemi and Francomb all approaching 22 years of age and still being loaned out to lower league Clubs. I get the impression that CH takes more interest in the Academy than most who have gone before and we can but hope that he can install a change in philosophy. In the short term I hope CH will muddle through until the summer with the formation and players he has and then to start change things round. I can but hope as I have no great desire to see a side copying the Stoke style of play in the long term. There is no great thought going into our game at the moment - hence the example quoted in my earlier post - as it just seems to be a desire to get the ball up the field as quickly as possible and usually it arrives there before the players. I want to see more players like Fox, Surman and Hoolahan fitted into a new fluid system, formation and style of play whilst accepting the continued need of a stable tight back four helped by a player like Tettey - my player of the season so far.
this is why hoolahan is so key to the way we play. he's our magician, our box of tricks, our key to unlocking tighter, more organised defences (which do exist in the premier league, believe it or not ). problem is, if he isn't playing or performs poorly, as was the case on saturday, we struggle. we didn't get him involved enough at the weekend but when we did he struggled - he's only human. i have no problem with him having off days - players like that invariably have more off days than some because of the way they play the game - they try things that others don't. i have no problem with the way we are set up to play. we've had our fair share of exciting games and decent football, and achieved some very decent results along the way. we do lack creativity - we did last season - but we got around it by playing in a very attacking way, overloading opposition penalty areas. we simply couldn't go on like that or we'd have been thumped every week. hughton has set his stall out correctly but we need an injection of quality if we can. we currently look like a lower half (but safe, which is important) premier league side. there is absolutely no harm in that - its a damn sight better than what we were three, four years ago! we are trying to stay up this season - that is all we are doing. if people want more this season then they need a wake up call because we are one of the teams who were always likely to be in the mix. there are about 10 others who are also in the mix - finish above three of them and this season has been a success, don't forget that. i keep reiterating patience is key but i fear i may be alone in having any...
"Tettey player of the season so far"? Seriously? Can't say I agree with that personally, I think Johnson has had a far better season myself and actually think Tettey has been fairly poor for the past month or so, not just last weekend. A lot is spoken of the weakness in Johnson's passing, and whilst I agree he's no Glenn Hoddle I think Tettey has been giving the ball away as much if not more.
With the youth situation, it'd be nice if we were to start giving them a chance the moment we're mathematically safe (assuming we will be!), even if it's just the last couple of games of the season. If one or both of the Murphy's look like they could step up to the first team, then perhaps we can save money on a left winger for example.
i agree munky. johnson has had a very good season. he still has weaknesses but his overall game has improved a considerable amount over the last year. for a free transfer, i have to say he's been an excellent acquisition. tettey started like a train but his performances have tailed off badly over recent weeks, culminating in a very poor performance on saturday, although he was not alone in that respect!
I was certainly in the minority amongst my fellow supporters,when I championed Johnson,early in his Carrow Rd career.Most people were shouting for Howson. I believe that Johnson is now our main man in central midfield. Long live "the Beast"
johnson does lack quality on the ball - that much is indisputable. but he has improved, especially this season. i think his form tailed off 2nd half of last season so it will be interesting to see if the same happens again. there is no question in my mind that he is helped by playing alongside tettey - they both get through a tremendous amount of work - more than one man can realistically do. i think tettey is the better player but johnson has been at least his equal so far and probably just trumps him. the game he missed at west ham was frightening how much space they had in the middle of the park!
I did put on an article that I was pleased that others appreciated Johnson. Those who would doubt his overall ability and contribution would do well to think of players like Bryan Robson, David Platt. Paul Ince and maybe even Roy Keane who weren't great passers, but boy did they become the number one choices for their managers. Now of course Bradders isn't in that class, yet, but there again were aren't Manure or Liverpool so everything has to be taken in context. And looking at City teams of the past, while Crook was doing his great stuff for us in the 80/90's, I remember the dynamic play Andy Townsend, Micky Phelan, Dave Phillips, none of who were in the gifted class, as examples who gave Crook the opportunity to look up and pick a pass.
