It's also kind of the point of a football forum to moan about things we haven't improved on from as you say the last 2 horrendous EPL seasons . I guess I have become a bit entitled and believe we should be a Premier league team and getting out of the Championship is a formality . Pretty sure those at the game were nervous and vented their frustration at our inability to make the game safe after being 2 goals up in the first 23 minutes too. Most Premier league teams would pass the ball around keeping possession nullifying a response, we can't do that still but as confidence grows from winning and with a bit more concentration we can improve that part of our game
On the plus side 6 wins on the bounce 2nd place Pukki closing in on Iwan's scoring record Sargent 6 in 6 Pukki looks irresistible 3 quality goals Sara & Nunez look class additions
I think you’re right to ask ourselves the question as to whether we are being entitled. There’s something in that - but equally I think other clubs would look at our squad and Summer transfer spend and say we should have no excuses for not being one of the strongest teams. Let’s face it, with our squad, top two really should be considered just above average expectations. But to stay in the Premier League, if we get promoted, we would need to perform to extraordinary levels.
It will be interesting to see how Fulham get on , they have much deeper pockets than ours and seem to have the same problem. Way too good for the Championship and nowhere near good enough to survive in the Premier league. With the American guy we may have some new wizzy data collection thing to highlight where we need to improve but we will still be the misfit poor relation with players that need to perform to their absolute best just to compete .
At long last a bit of reality and common sense has started to creep into this thread after loads of unnecessary moaning. FFS we are 2nd in the league, 4 points clear of the 3rd Club having won our last 6 games - what else can you hope for? We can't pass the ball about in our own half as well as they do in the Premiership - that is stating the bleedin obvious!! If we go up then this squad would struggle to survive - Shock! Horror! Sacre Bleu! How can that be? Perhaps it might be something to do with the fact that 9 of last nights starting 11 were here last year when we failed miserably in the Premiership.Of course we will struggle if we go up. Fulham spent £100m and came straight back down. Villa spent £100m and stayed up on goal difference. Florist have spent £100m and will probably come straight back down. We have to sell our best player and then replace him and improve the squad for a net spend of about half what the established Clubs pay for a squad player To stay up for one season would be greatly over performing for our Club but I would rather be supporting a yo-yo Club that one of the many bigger Clubs stuck for years in the Championship and worse. How about enjoying our current form and wait until we lose 3 or 4 on the trot before moaning about the team and the Manager.
Personally I'm criticising the stupid goals conceded which is a continuations of last season. It's not a lack of technical ability that caused Sinani and Nunez to gift that goal yesterday. Gibson against Cardiff and Wigan , Max against Hull I think Krul also from a kick out and a few other players . This is a lack of concentration and bad decision making , Sinani should have hoofed the ball away from danger yesterday. It would be boring if we were all happy clappers agreeing with each other and from experience you are one of our most cynical negative posters on the forum downplaying our chances of promotion or survival most years . We have the most expensive squad in the league so expectations are high , and I'm pretty certain Smith ,Shakespeare and the team will look back through videos of the **** ups and try to address them . I'm not sure how you coach players to concentrate for 90 mins but that's what's lacking .
Surely the fact that you say we won because of clinical finishing demonstrates how much we have improved already !!
I bloody hope they are, and have been, but obviously with no success, for some time. But at the end of the day they should do what is instinctively right, not what they are trained to do at Colney
As you say I am not a happy clapper by any stretch of the imagination and I am probably still one of the most pessimistic on here regarding our chances of ever surviving for more than one season in the PL but we have to accept that by and large we end up with players that PL Clubs have not considered good enough for them. The days have gone when defenders and goalkeepers just hoofed the ball forward as most times it just came straight back. Playing the ball from the back has become the norm and pressing has come in to counter it. The PL defenders can usually cope with that - although they sometimes make mistakes - but as you go down the pyramid the mistakes become more frequent and it is impossible for the Coaching staff to do anything about it. This is an area where a good defensive midfielder is needed as they can provide an outlet for an under pressure defender. Tettey did it, Skipp did it and hopefully Hayden will do it and when he is fit I hope that problem will reduce although it will never disappear. We are in a good position and when we get a specialist LB back, a fit Hayden and a match fit Sara available then even a hardened pessimist like me has to be optimistic.
I agree that now we, and all decent teams, play out from the back. The operative word being "out". We all too offer pass it about in our penalty area and fail in the "out" part of the scenario. Lack of confedence? Lack of movement ahead? Lack of ability? Who knows? The fact is we repeatedly play ourselves into trouble by doing this. And we are supposedly one of the best teams in this league. So, have the teams we have played so far done the same? Well, not to my memmory.
The example yesterday where Aarons goes down, looks like a foul. Sinani played on and instead of kicking it into touch to give Aarons time to get up , or clear the ball he plays a sideway pass to Nunez that didn't see the Bristol player running at him. At any level this was a cheap goal to gift them . There hasn't been a game this season where a poor pass out of defence hadn't handed the opposition a one on one with Krul. The Radio Norfolk commentary team talk about it most games. At Championship level we are getting away with it but in the Premier league these were getting punished regularly. No complaints if we let in well worked goals but we need to cut out those sloppy mistakes.
Very true canario. I'm thrilled by our current clinical scoring and both strikers seem to be buoyed by their success. I'd much rather watch a 3-2 win than a 1-0 clean sheet. The difficulty is that injuries happen or the strikers lose form and the goals dry up. What we need is a whole team defending well, controlling the midfield with quick, incisive passing and a lot of movement up front producing well executed goals. Then we might have a team that can survive in the PL.
Nunez was languid with the pass from Sinani and that should never happen in that part of the pitch. But were his teammates screaming out to warn him of the danger? It didn't look like it. I also saw Sarge easily stripped of the ball three times near mid-field putting pressure on the defense. After we went ahead 2-0, the commentator said how unhappy Smith looked because we began sitting back. How can that be? When the manager says go forward that's what the team should do. It seemed like a kind of group-think was happening on the pitch.
You can see in 2 of the first 3 highlights how Byram's right-footedness is capable of causing issues. He's pressed into playing a bad pass inside into a bad area, because he doesn't trust himself to take the ball onto his left and look up the line. At least that problem goes away when Giannoulis is fit. I think it's unreasonable to judge this squad in the context of whether it would survive in the PL or not. The first job of this squad is championship promotion, and that's what it should be judged against. We still have 37 league games and two transfer windows between now and a hypothetical PL season, and would probably expect a £30m+ net spend in that time. I'm pleased we've got players who look like they can develop in that time into players ready to take on the Premier League, and we'll have opportunities to fix outstanding issues. A core of Aarons, Omobamidele, Nunez, Hayden, Sara, Cantwell, Sargent, Pukki contains only one player who you'd expect to have peaked (Pukki), and there's only a couple of contract issues (Pukki, Cantwell). We're expecting everyone except perhaps Pukki to improve this season, or at least get more comfortable with Smith's tactics. That's 8 of a starting 11 who could start in the Prem and be better than the equivalent player from last season.* If we need to add a starting LCB, LB, CM, winger before next season, then that's not a massive shopping list, compared to the 9 signings we made in summer 2021. We'll be able to target higher quality additions in each role, and maybe that can be used to resolve some of the issues that are injury-depleted squad currently exhibit. *Early days on Sara, Hayden, Nunez, etc - but Gilmour, Normann, PLM isn't too much to improve on.
Tactical Analysis here: https://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com/2022/09/15/tactical-analysis-norwich-city-3-bristol-city-2/ "It looked an exciting game under the lights at Carrow Road at first glance but in reality, it was a gritty hard-fought game lacking in quality. This is typical of the Championship and there will be many like these this season. Despite the Canaries winning six on the bounce there are still causes for concern among Norwich fans."
Interesting to highlight Krul's distribution as an issue, I think on this forum we'd already highlighted the issues with playing out from the back, but that's another factor contributing to that. Time for Gunn? It relates to one of my "pet tactics", that of a wide target man. With Sargent playing wider and being relatively good in the air (he wins more aerial duels per game than any of our players outside of the defence), it would be really useful if Krul/Gunn could reliably find him with a ball out from the back when under pressure. In wider areas where he's up against a full-back (normally shorter) or a CB pulled well out of position, you'd hope he'd have a reasonable amount of success and help us escape the opposition press by another means when required. I don't think we see enough of it, and the accuraxy of Krul's kicking doesn't help that.
Two days later, and completely sober, I still stand by most of what I said. The defending was shambolic. I can recall at least five or six occasions when we gave the ball away, dangerously and often very dangerously, either in or near our own penalty area. The midfield was often non-existent as all the midfield players seem to have the freedom to roam wherever they want. Sargent was largely invisible out there on the wing. Yes, he got the goal with his head, but apart from that he had a poor game. So the problems of how we make the midfield more solid and how we integrate Pukki and Sargent into the same team remain unsolved. We got the win because Pukki and Sargent were 'clinical', to use the word we squabbled about on here a few months ago, but Bristol outplayed us for long spells. It was a poor performance with three excellent moments of individual skill. Everyone must remember the post-relegation season under Neil. If the performances aren't good, eventually it catches up with you.
Smith would be mad to play Gunn ahead of Krul, particularly whilst we have no naturally left footed defender. Yes Krul's distribution could be better, but to play Gunn ahead of Krul would make our distribution of long balls from the back even worse.