I have followed the Canaries (not always in person in recent years) and have suffered and been buoyed by good and bad seasons. Sometimes I have had the feeling that things have fallen right for us and other seasons not. The reason I post this is to highlight the last year in the Championship and this year in the Premiership and question whether luck or maybe fate have somehow played a hand. The Championship promotion year things just happened to oil the season. We scored no end of late (very late ) goals to invariably win games and add 2 points where a draw seemed likelier and maybe fairer. Whenever we were briefly in trouble e.g. home to Southend, we scored two late goals to come from 0-1 to win a game we could easily have lost. Then at Easter Cardiff (who were our main rivals) blew out at home to Middlesbrough and we went to Portsmouth and won. That season we also won at Coventry which has been pretty much a rarity in my lifetime and doubled Leicester who have been a bit if a bogey side at times. Most things went right. PL's signings invariably did a good job even though some were little more than just plucky triers, it all just clicked, fate perhaps. Compare that to this season and it has been largely the opposite. How many times have opposition goalkeepers played blinders, how many open goals or very easy chances have we squandered and how many times when we have needed a favour from a top team to beat our rivals have we been let down. Similarly the hype of RvW which made us feel so good just never happened and Redmond was not quite the article we had been promised. Injuries also took their toll at times and E. Bennett was missed over the season and Pilks too (among others) It is just like the footballing Gods have evened things up and our bonus of the promotion season has been negated. I wonder what next season will bring..........but does anyone share or empathise with the views above? I look forward to your comments.
Not sure how much fate is involved THURNBY, they do say that you make your own luck, and I think that´s nearer the truth, to be honest. We´ve patently let ourselves down at crucial times in crucial games, and we can´t really blame keepers for pulling off some great saves at vital times, that´s what they´re there to do after all. I fear we can only blame ourselves,
This is very true, relegated teams are not unlucky. We fully deserved to go down, to be honest I felt we were even more deserving last season. We have contributed very little to the League in the last two seasons.
I'm not a big one for analysing our luck over a season but it is easy to say "what if" when you look back at some of the close calls this season. A point here or there could literally make all the difference. That said, I hear what you're saying Thurnby and good to see you point to some of the positives that we had previously too. I'm don't think we'll hear too many opinions suggesting we don't deserve to go down this season overall.
Thanks folks, I am not saying that we never deserved to be relegated, indeed I agree with the comments above. I suppose RBF you are effectively re-quoting Gary Player's line "The more I practice the luckier I get" and Carrubah is right in saying that in many ways we deserved no better than what we got, I guess as Hairy says though, the odd extra point that we could or should have taken (Cardiff home and away really) would have just nudged us up. I think finally the other missing ingredient between the two seasons I have focused on is the togetherness of the whole club. We had it in that Championship year from top to bottom and everybody worked together, this season could really not having been farther from the truth and that disunity may have ultimately cost us.
you have lucky seasons and unlucky seasons along the way, but you always finish where you ultimately deserve
If you run structural equation models of the factors underlying teams finishing positions, the result is a very large degree of unexplained variance. This could be interpreted as indicating wide confidence intervals around the finishing position, plus or minus 2 positions as a broad rule, therefore our true position could be 19 18, 17, 16, 15. this season. I'm trying to delay work this morning
I realise that to an extent you were taking the piss with that post,but actually it makes perfect sense.Probably Fulham and Cardiff are going to end up too far adrift for luck to play a factor in survival or relegation but for us it may have been a factor.Personally I feel that if ours and Sunderlands fixtures to OT had been reversed we might have gone into Sunday above them.The Fer Cardiff goal isn't part of my calculations but they had incredible luck against us and the 4-1 points haul should certainly have been reversed.On the other side I think our point v Newcastle was a lucky one.
i mentioned this the other day - that is a case of luck going against us. having said that, united were pretty dreadful against us, even with the buzz around the place but we just didn't turn up
we deserved to go down,all said and done,and sunderland certanly deserved to stay up. its all about next season and a quick return now, we need to rid the club of the players who dont give a toss,keep the ones that do and get a manager who can get the winning"never say die" attitude back we had under lambert. oh and getting grant holt back wouldnt be a bad idea. we have not been the same squad without him
I have to say I can't remember the last time I read a post that I agree more with, this is exactly how I feel fella
The failure to overcome 10-man Hull set the season and wasn't helped by Snodgrass taking away the penalty from Wolfswinkel. City never recovered and never looked like doing a Palace or Sunderland. The script was written to do a Wigan with the last four games but we'rent good enough.
