there is no right or wrong way to play football. i'm not a big fan of the tippy-tappy football teams play - not those who press high, those who do it in their own half - but i am a big fan of quick, counter attacking play and i think that's where hughton wants to take us, certainly there are signs of it with the pace added in the shape of olsson and redmond and the good movement of hooper and van wolfswinkel. it'll be based on tough and solid defending so all he's doing now is shaping the current side to be able to do that. once again, we are in transition so because we don't have the midfield to execute the moves required all the time it can get a bit messy. its a jigsaw puzzle that he's still in the middle of solving and it'll take more than just this season to sort it.
in 24 months, not 12! and i did say almost - that only 7 remain from the initial 25 from just 12 months ago says it all. do you see johnson, hoolahan or fox being here next summer cos i don't. even the others aren't guaranteed. could get snapped up or may get moved on.
I would say unless Johnson's form continues as it is he'll probably be here next season. I'd have to agree that Wes and Fox probably wont last much longer.
I agree. His passing, contrary to popular belief and the occasional poor game, is improving considerably. Obviously it's still not great... it was atrocious before, but it's a step in the right direction!
Is part of BJ's problem that he is VERY right-footed? Since he is regularly given the left hand side to patrol, he must be fairly comfortable with it, but a left-footed or two footed player would find it so much easier.
I was saying this last season. People always give Johnson a hard time over his passing but he plays some lovely cross field balls when he's playing well and seems to play the best through balls of anyone in our team (See his assist for Pilks against Sunderland (I think) last season). He hasn't been close to last seasons standards yet but then I don't think a few player have yet.
I think Bradley Johnson will be here next season. The realisation that Wes won't be, however, has made me sad as he is now our longest serving player. I DO currently have a lot of time on my hands, so, continuing on from Supers' list, I've compiled this list of our players, 1 being the longest serving. Sorry for taking the thread off on a tangent, but it is relevant to the overhaul Hughton has made... This is based on the day the player first agreed to play for us. 1) Wes Hoolahan - 1st July 2008 2) Russell Martin - 1st November 2009 3) David Fox - 2nd June 2010 4) John Ruddy - 5th July 2010 5) Elliot Bennett - 14th June 2011 6) Bradley Johnson - 1st July 2011 7) Anthony Pilkington - 6th July 2011 8) Daniel Ayala - 16th August 2011 9) Jonny Howson - 24th January 2012 10) Ryan Bennett - 1st February 2012 11) Steven Whittaker - 30th June 2012 12) Robert Snodgrass - 26th July 2012 13) Michael Turner - 27th July 2012 14) Javier Garrido - 16th August 2012 15) Seb Bassong - 21st August 2012 16) Alex Tettey - 24th August 2012 17) Mark Bunn - 29th August 2012 18) Jacob Murphy - 4th January 2013 =) Josh Murphy - 4th January 2013 20) Luciano Becchio - 31st January 2013 21) Ricky van Wolfswinkel - 23rd March 2013 22) Nathan Redmond - 4th July 2013 23) Martin Olsson - 10th July 2013 24) Carlo Nash - 12th July 2013 25) Leroy Fer - 13th July 2013 26) Gary Hooper - 26th July 2013 27) Johan Elmander - 21st August 2013 As you can see, #1 is a Roeder signing, #2 through #10 are Lambert signings and the remaining 17 were signed by Hughton. This is one of the main reasons I don't want us to sack Hughton; I don't think I could deal with another overhaul of the squad so drastic... I should also clarify that I absolutely do not think he deserves to be sacked in the slightest.
On the whole, I don't agree Robbie. I think a significant change has taken place and the dreams have been scaled down. You're obviously an older fan like me, so you remember Derby and Forest (and dare I say it even Ipswich) winning the league in earlier times, and we finished third only twenty years ago. And while I agree that Crewe fans didn't expect to get to the top tier, I can remember teams like Carlisle and Northampton at least reaching there, and Wimbledon somehow surviving there for years on miniscule gates. I agree that fans these days are more like spoilt children than they used to be, but I think this is borne of the frustration of knowing that any success is going to be relative and minor (being a Fulham). Another factor is wages, I think, which has taken players into a world where they have no real relationship with the fans, so our attitude to them becomes more like our attitude to celebrities - a mixture of worship, envy, schadenfreude, and sometimes perhaps even hatred. (I think this is one reason we loved Holt so much - he still had some of that old-fashioned gas-fitter-made-good quality about him). To be honest, I don't much like where football is going in many ways. If it weren't for City, I don't think I'd have much interest any more.
i know i was ridiculed by the binners for saying it last season, but vietnam's post sums up why i said we effectively finished fourth in the premier league last season. you could dismiss the top 7 - we played in a 13 team league. any aspirations of reaching say, the champions league are so remote that its very off putting for fans of clubs like us where the only goal is survival and a good cup run/success. i do however think that this could end up being the last of the bumper tv payouts - nothing to base that on but pure gut feeling. if that is the case, we might see changes. it won't be this way forever - the premier league will end up eating itself and so long as we are clever and run astutely, we could be one of the clubs who actually benefit from a collapse.
There are a lot of different points there, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't (plus a bit of talking at cross purposes). Just to add to what I said previously, there are two related issues, one about football and fan's attitudes in general, the other about NCFC and our fan's attitudes in particular. The latter is what chiefly concerns me, because I agree with Superman when he says on the Ruddy thread that "we could end up blowing the best chance we've probably ever had of sustained top flight football if a section of our fan base continually fail to understand what is going on at the moment". This may seem far fetched to some, but I think he is absolutely right. For one thing, why should the prime mover of everything that has happened to us over the last four years. David McNally, stick around if the carefully constructed and so far hugely successful long-term strategy he has put in place with his fellow board members is undermined by a sizeable section of our so-called "support"? Why should our owners, who have invested by their standards (if not those of Abramovich et. al.) a lot of money to not only keep us afloat but also to now set us well on course for a brighter future, continue their commitment and unstinting backing when a sizeable section of fans won't buy into what they are doing and, worse still, start rocking the boat and knocking us off course? Hopefully the numbers of "rebellious" fans will remain too small to do such damage; hopefully the vast majority of us have more sense and will back those running the club and allow THEM to make the necessary decisions. We are not Blackburn, we are not Pompey, our owners and board know what they are doing, they are not corrupt asset strippers, and under their management the club is thriving. There is simply no justification at all for any section of fans to start taking the law into their own hands and start threatening to undermine the whole project. If Chris Hughton doesn't meet the targets that the board have set him, the board will deal with it. Meanwhile what all at the club need is whole-hearted, united support. Which leads me back to the question of attitudes. My opinion as to the cause of what I call the spoilt child attitude is that it derives from the fact that a lot of our current supporters became fans in our years of almost constant First Division status. Quite simply, because when it started for them they watched top-tier football at Carrow Road, and even for a time very successful years as far as NCFC was concerned, they simply came to believe that we are "by right" a top tier club. Furthermore, they were used to watching our team play the kind of football that they now think of as "our style of football". They talk about playing "the Norwich way", but it is only possible for them to think of that as "the Norwich way" because they never saw the football at Carrow Road before the arrival of that generation of managers (Bond, Brown and their legacy successors, Stringer and Walker). I and others could tell them that in the 50s and 60s, and up to the arrival of Saunders, VERY LITTLE of the football we witnessed at Carrow Road came anywhere near what they now think of as "the Norwich style". We basically started being "a good footballing side" with the arrival of John Bond and the West Ham contingent. On our downward spiral towards League One, the football that we played, which the "spoilt children" couldn't believe they were being subjected to, was simply more or less what those of us who preceded the Golden Years were used to seeing year in year out, sometimes better (in the great Cup Run and the years of Davies, Bolland and Bryceland) and very often worse. In short, what these spoilt children believe to be the norm, and their divine right to watch, is very far from the norm as far as NCFC are concerned, and there is and has never been any divine right to watch football of that style and standard at Carrow Road. My final point is this. The Golden Years of NCFC took twenty years in the making. Those of us older ones who watched Mike Walker's team play Bayern Munich and Inter Milan in European competition, knew just how long the road had been. Twenty years! And the spoilt children who never knew any different until they experienced the shock of subsequent decline, now expect our current manager to restore what they think of as normality in the space of little more than a year!
this concerns me too - glad i'm not the only one. maybe it shouldn't concern me - he's a big boy - he's used to this sort of thing, he's used to football and the fans... but i'm afraid it does concern me - greatly.
one more thing, i am of the generation that you talk about robbie, yet i am fully understanding of our current situation, so i don't think its necessarily an age thing. as i mentioned before, it seemed to me (perhaps wrongly but its how it seemed) that its often the older generations who have the least patience. i found this odd but its probably just dependent on who you are, not when you were born. either you grasp the context or you don't!
Well I'm certainly from the "old codgers" brigade, I am sick and tired of the constant sniping at CH, I said on another thread somewhere, if these people ran our club, we'd have a new manager every 3 games!
