Under Lambert, our best form of defence was attack - try and outscore the opposition. Under Hughton, this has completely changed. Our best form of defence is prevention. We prevent the opposition from getting a chance. This was shown brilliantly gets United yesterday where we restricted the opposition to long range shots and hassled their attack when there was a chance for them. The whole back four were brilliant yesterday. I would even say Turner was better than Bassong!
I remember being outright terrified every time someone ran at Whitbread, Ward or R.Martin last season, no protection afforded by the midfield...what a difference this summer's signings make. In Ewan Chester we trust, sterling job he has done as chief scout
Agree with all of this, especially the new defence and the solid cover provided by Tettey and Johnson in front of it whilst also dominating the mid-field. This was aided by the tracking back of Snoddy and Pilks which severely limited Utd's strengths on the flanks. Once the ball was gained Wes became the distributor and Pilks and Snoddy rolled forward to pressure the flanks, supported by Whittaker and Garrido on the overlap. CH, CC and PT have done wonders drilling the players into this system and still managing to match Utd in the number of goals. Mick Dennis' on all of this is worth a read: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/359089? For those who are still counting, City now have one more point than PL's City had after 12 games last year. It was great to hear the 'only one CH' singing on Saturday. We've moved on! OTBC!
Which, if taken pro-rata over the full season would leave us finishing with 44 Plus we've already played Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manure and Tottenham once each in the league and taken 7 points out of the 15 possible in those fixtures
although we've played a lot of the 'top' teams, we still have some tricky games to come before Xmas - Everton (a), Swansea (a) and WBA (a?) spring to mind. one things for sure, after this little run, not as much fear strikes me when i look down the fixture list.
supers, just checked it, Rick is right we had 13 points after 12 games wins against sunderland, bolton and swansea, draws against stoke, blackburn, wigan, liverpool defeats to, arsenal, WBA, chelsea, Villa and man utd we beat koo pee argh in our 13th game
thank you max. is anyone else a little surprised by that or is it just me? i know my memory is going but i could have sworn we made a very good start (bar the first four) last year and were comfortably perched in a lofty 8th or 9th at this stage.
is it because we've had heavy defeats against fulham, liverpool and chelsea this time around, makes you think we haven't done that well, when actually we have.
no, i think we've made the kind of start i expected, even if the results have perhaps not come in the games i expected! i was just surprised as i felt we'd made a much better start last season than this. we were always going to have a few poor results while the new players and manager gelled into a team. we don't really have too many concerns right now, other than our chance conversion rate which is poor.
The points I wrote down are from the respective games that were mentioned against the 'big' teams taken from the entirety of last season. So the defeat to Arsenal, Man United etc last seaaon.
You're right in remembering that City were up to 9th in the table, Supers, but the top teams dominated much more last year and the table was very different as a result. The great thing is that 11 of the current 14 points have come in the last five game unbeaten run and if that isn't a sign of 'gelling' I don't know what is!
By the way, the continuously updated camparison of this and last year can be found here: http://stats.football365.co.uk/dom/ENG/teams/NorwichCty.html (It makes life a lot easier!)
