From today's Dail Fail - Hughton... we have a problem! Norwich are in the drop zone after spending £13.5m on three strikers who have managed just SIX SHOTS on target all season! Well worth a read and I hope CH buys each of our midfield (and attackiing full backs) a copy. I'll even buy them myself and deliver them to Colney!!! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...n-zone-having-spent-13-5million-strikers.html
And just think, we're only one win from midtable so surely when they do start firing we'll be shooting up the table
it certainly highlights our problem - getting decent service to the front man. our two strikers are prolific in front of goal and as munky suggests, if we're only three points off the top half whilst not scoring any goals, imagine what we'll do when they start hitting the net more regularly! this is no sleight against hooper or rvw - the issue is the midfield who are having much better possession than last season but failing to provide the right type of final deliveries required.
Which - at the risk of sounding like the needle is stuck, is a serious and growing worry, with over a quarter of the season gone. All four wide men are sadly in and out of the side through injuries (E Benno longer term) but just why they can't all be coached to look for the runs of Hooper and RvW rather than have an optimistic pop - often from long range, is a complete mystery to me. It also reinforces my belief that an out and out 'attacking coach' or whatever title you wish to bestow on him, should be brought to the club ASAP.
Just out of interest did anybody hear Durham on Talkshite last night and his views on Hughton (there you go Dave, just for you),In my mind he was bang on the money. I heard one caller putting forward the name Sean Dyche. what do you guys think of him? I for one have been impressed with him over the past couple of years.
OK,here is a stat for you to consider.The ten sides that we have played to date have conceded a total of 93 goals in their 100 games.(0.93) per game.That compares with 240 for the whole of The Premiership.(1.2 per game) On that basis you would expect us to have scored another two goals against the average side.Of course we might have scored them against on of the sides who have beaten us by more than a single goal which would not have improved our points.
Interesting, he is one of the few people I can imagine instilling confidence in the players in a very short space of time and not making the situation worse.
supers and cromer - TOTALLY agree. The fans can all see what needs to be addressed - something HAS to be done - if not in time for teh Wet Sham game, then during the International break. Just looked at the 'goals for' for the bottom 10 teams and none of them have scored many goals - WBA - 10 Cardiff - 13 Swansea - 12 Aston Villa - 9 West Ham - 8 Fulham - 10 Stoke - 7 Norwich - 6 Sunderland - 7 Crystal Palace - 6
even spurs have only scored 9 and 4 were penalties! take out the top teams and in general, its a low scoring division
isn't adrian durham the guy who has had a personal vendetta against norwich for some time? yeah - i think i'll take on board everything he says am i also right in thinking that he basically says controversial stuff to get people to ring his extremely expensive hotline? why do people listen to this burke? anyway, sean dyche - doing a very good job at burnley and did likewise at watford before being harshly dismissed. but remind me guru, what type of football does dyche get his sides playing...? oh yes, that's right. dire, hoofball. not my cup of tea although i'm very happy to admit that he is very competent and gets results and having predicted his burnley side may well get relegated this season, he's proving both myself and many others wrong. but is he better than hughton? no. if we are going to get a manager in a similar vein to the likes of hughton and i suppose dyche (ie, impressive championship managers looking to forge a career in the top flight), then it has to be malky, simply because he will reunite the fans. i don't see him being any better than what we have though - i'd argue he isn't as good. dyche certainly isn't. and please, somebody, get the man a throat lozenge...
It may also be worth noting that this season the goals scored remains the lowest since the start of The Premiership in 1992.
This is precisely why Hughton needs to go. Firstly he bought these strikers, so you would imagine that he would have some idea of how he wished to feed them. He has had preseason and the first quarter of the season now and with his most excellent attack coaching mustered just the 6 shots. In reality has anyone seen any new ideas in that time? We are still playing our wingers inverted, we are still floating dire crosses in to a near empty box to strikers who will not strive on that sort of delivery. Seriously I have seen some improved ball retention and interplay but nothing good connecting the strikers to the rest of the team. That follows Holts issolation and demoralisation last season, he ain't learning or improving. Pooton out! Bah!
Highlights for me that we need that Attacking midfielder we didn't draft in over the summer, this should be our plan b.
I think throughout all this discussion about our weaknesses, all those who are bemoaning our inability to create as many chances and scoring as many goals as in seasons gone by fail to recognise a massive factor in this - our opposition and the defensive tactics that are being employed. With the increasing reliance on a tactic utilising just one up front and bolstering the midfield it is not surprising that is is becoming increasingly more difficult to carve out clear cut chances with so many bodies in the way in the opposition's final third. Yes, we have to come up with methods of breaking this down and we do need to improve on our final ball to get these chances to our front men, but with the tactics being used in the last year or two this is not easy - and we are coming up against international class defenders and defensive midfielders week in, week out. If we were the only club struggling to score and create chances then it would be a more serious problem, however you speak to the fans of West Ham, Fulham, Stoke, Sunderland, Hull, Villa and even Spurs as has been pointed out then they will tell you an almost identical tale. Even Saints for all the money they have spent and their lofty position are only averaging a fraction more than a goal a game and it is the way they have been set up with defense as the priority that is reaping them rewards this season.
to counter that, hooper has only made two starts while rvw has played 7 and been nursing an injury for 3 of them. it's still early days and although you are right that holt also had problems last season, we have changed the style of play this season to try and suit the new strikers, it just hasn't clicked yet. we're not helped by the fact we've had issues out wide with injuries and poor form. it also took 6 games to figure out the best system and now tettey, a key element of that system, has been ruled out. its not as straight forward as you make out and any new manager will have precisely the same problems but he might then take half a dozen games to figure out how to play! it's not black and white
guru, what was he saying, sack him i assume? he predicted us to finish top ten before the season started
sometimes supers you get the most sense out of your worse enemy. basically He said that if Hughton played a better brand of football then supporters would be more patient in terms of results, but if a manager plays defensive you have to get the results or the fans will turn against you, but if you play a more expensive style then perhaps the fans are more forgiving. I totally agree on this, probably the most sense he has spoken. I don't normally agree with anything he says because he slags ipswich off a lot aswell, but he is right in general terms here, not just because its hughton, He actually praised Hughton a lot for his time at newcastle yesterday and couldn't understand why he has gone down the route he has with birmingham and now yourselves. In regards to Dyche, have you actually seen Burnley this year? I, like you thought they could go down, but i tell you what they are playing some lovely stuff, very easy on the eye.
