Yep, always have a soft spot for teams with the same strip as ours. Look forward to welcoming them to SMS next season.
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Another poor performance at Portman Road - heaven knows how we are second. Scruffy first half but deservedly ahead once some pace and physicality was injected. Second half just seemed to sit back and deal with wave after wave of Brum attacks, barely put more than 3 passes together. Looked like they should have had an equaliser but the ball was ruled out of play - marginal at best. Still that’s 2 points back from the 4 lost to recent abject penalty decisions later acknowledged as such by PGMOL.
@JohnF should be licking his lips for the East Anglian derby next week.
You’re describing our last 7 first half performances. Don’t care at this stage. An actual performance would be nice but at this point it’s just about getting points on the board no matter how ugly it is surely?
Could have really done with Hull losing to Coventry tonight but that just further illustrates how tight it all is. The only genuinely poor team I’ve seen this season has bash Leicester. Everyone else and the margins are so tight it’s ludicrous.
Wouldn’t have been averse to Coventry beating Hull, but whatever. 
I don’t understand what’s happened to Leicester though.
And brace…
Started with the leadership change following the helicopter crash. They became a very large ship heading for the rocks of PL relegation after making every mistake you could possibly make.
Poor but expensive purchases post title win. No youth system of note pushing anyone cheap but great through. Existing stars leaving for better (although as it turned out, mostly worse) things whilst the ones who stayed demanded huge wages to do so whilst knowing full well the squad and team were being dismantled thanks to age, greed and a lack of motivation. A lack of leadership at the top leading to a succession of directionless managerial appointments. The romantic notion of Shakespeare was soon exposed. The outlier of Puel. The unbalanced squad inherited by Rogers plus the exorbitant cost of getting him in the first place. Maresca performed miracles but fan entitlement kicked in and promotion wasn’t enough. Pace and style was required. He saw the the writing on the wall and took the Chelsea job when on paper that was no easier. Then a panic over Steve Cooper led to a quick dismissal, PSR and wage ratio problems piling up.
The logic of appointing Van Nostelrooy for a relegation battle, mid table Marti for a promotion bid and then Rowett for safety, escapes me. If anyone at Leicester knows the ethos underpinning all this they’ve yet to reveal it to anyone. Their next solution was to appoint an ex player on an ongoing temporary basis in King and start a complete internal reorganisation. The latter may be the only sensible thing they e done in a decade. King may be an excellent manager but he’s got no chance to prove it. Nobody could manage in such circumstances.
Word is that the owners will still support them financially but let’s see what that looks like when they fall into L1 and revenue falls off a cliff.
With litigation piling up it’s only going to get a lot worse for them before it gets better.
I’m looking forward to this one with greater confidence than the previous one.
I’ve always treated local derbies with a great deal of trepidation.
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The big talent both Lambert and Farke possessed at this time of the season was the fact they persuaded players to stay on the offensive rather than drop towards their own penalty area once they were in the lead. It’s when you find out how good your managers man management skills are.
Yeah I totally agree. Parky laid it out exactly like that at half time on Friday for us when we were rightly 2-0 down, passive, sat too deep etc. Came out like a train in the second half, much faster, more direct, higher up, played some delightful stuff and unlucky not to win in the end.
He’s already spoken of the need to start like that against Saints tonight. I think that’s going to be incredibly difficult as Saints are clearly going to hit us early and hard but it’s still the right approach. At this point it’s about attitude, determination and actually do as your manager asks rather than performance.
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My parents were visiting us in Norwich around Easter 1981 (I think) & we were playing Ipswich at CR when they were in with a good chance of winning, then, Division One & we were in the lower half of the table.
I insisted my mum came to the match as she had never been to a professional game before. She enjoyed everything about the experience, particularly as we won, one nil I think & effectively put pay to Towns championship aspirations. I may have been Justin Fashanu who scored the winner.
My biggest memory from that day was how unbelievably fast Alan Brazil was & what a great job Chris Woods did keeping him out all afternoon as the Norwich defence simply couldn’t keep up with his pace. I haven’t seen anyone live since that looked anywhere near as quick.
Hoping for a repeat of that result again this weekend which should be entirely possible if we turn up, unlike the complete no show & surrender at Portman Road in September. Would be a surprise, & major disappointment, if the players are not fired up for the occasion.
Should be a good match for the neutral.
In your favour, I wonder if Saints will still be celebrating the cup win & thinking that the game will be a walk over for them compared to Arsenal, won’t be able to show the same form & could be brought down to earth?
I think it’ll be a good match full stop, neutral or otherwise.
I’m sure our more entitled fans will be talking of “just win” games etc. I’m still at the “4 years ago we were in non-league and now we’re playing Saints in a game that isn’t in a cup and matters to both, how mad is that?” stage. Nothing but joy for he regardless of outcome.
I can’t see Saints being tripped up by the Arsenal game tbh. They’re too good for that. For me, out of all the promotion candidates, they look the most like a ready made PL team.
Coventry are basically Burnley in waiting. Ipswich have never really set themselves on fire at any point, much like my team, but are up there on both consistency and the ability to pull wins from draws. Boro have some good players but no depth and they still play without purpose too much. Millwall are by far the only other really strong team I’ve seen but are remarkably beatable at home. Hull went on a great run after beating us at their place late last year but have only just about done enough to stay there since. Derby, like ourselves, weren’t expecting to be in the mix. They’re nowhere near the finished article but I feel only joy for Eustace, probably the most under-rated EFL manager along with Parky.
Blimey, another away win for Luton! We are actually hitting some form albeit too late leaving us with an outside chance of the play offs if we continue to win & others don’t. Much, much better performance; agreed it was against a surprisingly poor AFC Wimbledon side who look nothing like the robust side we played as our first home game at the start of the season. Very pleased that we are actually playing some decent football and have found our way back to pressuring sides, moving the ball forward and creating chances. Sets things up nicely for next weekend’s Wembley trip against Stockport. It could be too much to hope for two Wembley visits….
Interesting article in the Grauniad - positing the demise of the 9 due to possession based football.
Oh me, oh my!
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Well on the one hand that was the sort of hammering we were advised by the Championship experts we’d have to take several times this season and it’s actually the first time we’ve lost by more than 1 goal all season so I’ll take that.
Am I allowed a second positive? Matty James is back. Clearly well overweight but even then he gave us what we’ve been missing for weeks.
Nothing else positive to report. All the obvious weaknesses in a squad built to avoid a relegation battle came together in a performance in which, in truth, we never got started and was awful from management down and Southampton were understandably well below their recent levels given the FA Cup and 6 changes. Can’t say the time wasting impressed but otherwise we wholly authored our own misfortune.
Like every game since Chelsea we had no midfield to speak of and conceded two awful gifted goals. Windass goal was our 2nd shot of the match (and the first came from our right back) and was against the run of play and then some. We were ponderous, half arsed in our tackles, slow and careless. Consensus was Southampton should have put it to bed well before half time.
An end to end open start to the second half saw us start to get our usual momentum only for the typically awful O’Brien to gift a third goal at exactly the wrong moment. Game over. Fourth goal was excellent and the fifth another farce.
We picked the wrong team and waited 20 minutes too late to fix the errors. Moore starts by default ahead of Smith even if only half fit or interested. No idea why Broadhead, Kabore or O’Brien started. Cleworth, Thomason and Dobson were great. Everyone else was not. Doyle had his periodic absolute stinker and Hyam just struggled, which is most unusual. All five Saints goals were gifts from Hyam, Doyle and O’Brien. Really don’t want to see Moore, Broady, Kabore and O’Brien play for us again after this season.
Saints now join the tiny group of clubs to have done a double over us in the Parky era. Can you name the other two?
As suspected, we’re not competing with Saints. Would be shocked if they finished as low as 6th. We’re in a battle with Derby and Hull.
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Having analysed our horrendous injury record Norwich have employed their first performance director. The person appointed is Paul Ford who has spent the past fifteen years with Team GB preparing athletes for the olympics.
It will be interesting to see how next years players injuries record compares to our past two or three years.
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I think Chris_M & I will take the three away points, and the +4 goal difference.
Not bad for the ”B” team.
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Even if they are useless as footballers, we should have the fastest team in the league…..
On a serious note it would be good if he can get us through a season with just a few minor knocks rather than too many long term injuries, which has been the norm for too long.
At least the club have recognised they have a problem & are making the effort to do something about it.
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I hope he can cut down on the injuries incurred in training.
Makama and Mattsson injuries were understandable, broken bone and sprain but the number of hamstring a muscular injuries has been ridiculous.
Clement has indicated the squad lacked fitness and preseason conditioning as main contributors and was keen on appointing a fitness director.
He seems to have got most things right so far
Let’s hope he can add this to the list.
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