Christoph Stiepermann

If you take the fact that it's a local derby out of the equation and look at it objectively I think it's fair to say that we're likely to lose this one. We can't defend and they find it easy to score goals, we tend to rely on outscoring the opposition but they score more than us. We're away and we're generally poorer away and they're better at home. We're missing our key striker and (whether people like it or not) our first choice CB pairing in Hanley and Gibson and they're pretty much injury free. The game is going to be quite emotionally charged and that favors a team that keeps things simple, know their jobs and each others games well. We're try to over complicate things and our side changes weekly and theres not been a whole lot of cohesion built up between players so simply working hard and being up for the game won't be enough. I don't want to be too pessimistic and we always have a chance but I'd say the odds are well in their favour. The only hope I have is that we ran Leicester and Southampton pretty close and if we can play at our best and every player is on their game we have a chance with a bit of luck. Gunn will have to make some good saves, the CB's can't make a mistake, Kenny will have to have one of his sporadic colossal games, Sara hopefully reverts back to his early season form, Rowe needs to be up for it, Barnes needs to thrive in the occasion and whoever's up top needs to take their chances and if all that falls into place we've got a real chance. The trouble is we've rarely had a game where we haven't had 2 or 3 players play poorly which brings the whole structure crashing down, a lot rests on Wagner to get them in the right mindset and then if we're doing okay into the second half he needs to not mess things up with poor substitutions. We need a lot to fall into place for us and I'd snap someones hand off for a draw. Not because I'm defeatist or think Ipswich are the best team ever but because we've got real problems with consistency, mentality and our fundamental tactical approach and because of that a draw away against any top 6 side isn't a bad result right now. Plus I'd love to stretch the unbeaten run, if you offered me another last minute equalizer right now similar to Klose's in 2018 I'd be over the moon eventhough I'd love to beat them again.

Makes some easy saves look spectacular but he hasn't come close to saving anything beyond what you would expect an average Championship GK to save. He is good enough to be a regular in L1 or a lower Championship team's backup GK but given how many good GK's there are out there and our recent level of being a top Championship/bottom PL team it's more a failure of scouting and recruitment that we've ended up with him as a backup. He should be Millwall or Huddersfield's no.2, not ours. Championship backup GK's are never anything special but we could have and should have done better.

For the first part of that game we out-Watford'ed Watford. We were strong, hard working, we ran more than them, we got at them and got the ball forward quickly. But then we got sloppy for one passage of play, our L1 quality Gk didn't save a simple long shot and then after that we fell to pieces again and stood off them and gave them too much respect and that allowed them to build momentum and score another easy goal. It's baffling that such an experienced side can be so mentally fragile and lack a killer edge like we do. The club has been criticizing fans for losing faith after going a goal behind or getting too carried away after a good start but is it any wonder when the players do the exact same thing?

It's clear that the idea was to get more men behind the ball, limit space in and around our box and commit less men forwards when we attack but the reason it didn't obviously look that way to a lot of people is because most of the players we have aren't really suited to playing that way so we were still opened up at times by a very poor side. Duffy, Batth and Barnes would thrive in that type of set up but the rest of the players don't really track back or tackle well so it's still not that difficult to play through us. We've built a side to play on the front foot, we're not very good at it but that was the idea behind signing these players and while you can set them up differently like Wagner did yesterday most won't be comfortable or particularly effective playing that way. Better sides will still find it quite easy to score against us but I think with confidence being so low and with us shipping goals for fum all season it is the right call to play this way in the short term just to steady things a bit while we wait for injured players to come back. As an added bonus it requires a lot less running then our usual system which might help us maintain some consistency and prevent injuries during the upcoming fixture pileup. But without signing 5 or 6 new players it's not the solution longer term.

I really enjoy this thread as well. Some fantastic and knowledgeable discussion lead by @Parma Ham's gone mouldy but in some ways because all perspectives are covered and the talk is so detailed and multifaceted every reply almost necessitates a bit of a mini essay and it's hard not to keep going over old ground so I mostly sit this one out but I love reading the thread. Anyway on what's the alternative? For me it would be the same type of model that Webber employed when he first took over here aided by some more modern stats based recruitment and using potential investment from our new owners not to go on massive spending spree's but to keep a Maddison for a year or two longer and have players like Godfrey and Omobamidele stay a bit longer term so we can build around them and hopefully be able to offer a Bunedia high enough wages to prevent him from demanding moves away. So not a spend our way to success approach, nor the somewhat idealistic totally self funded approach we took before (That yes we were quite lucky to have so much relative success with, but luck plays a huge part for every club so I'm not disparaging) and not existing solely as a glorified B team either. Have a clear defined playing style that the fanbase enjoys even if it's not completely suitable for what would work for a club trying to survive in the PL. That's pretty much priority number one for a club who's fans called Dean Smith's football 'hoofball' so the club doesn't have much of a choice there. Bring through young players but try to keep them here for a few years and build around them, if you have to sell one or two occasionally that's fine but don't build the model around selling. Supplement with loans from top clubs but only if the player is an improvement not just to demonstrate that we're a good club to develop players at and try to make use of stat based scouting and clever recruitment to get value for money. So basically what we were doing in Webber's first few years but aided by a bit of investment to keep players and a more modern scouting approach that other smaller clubs have had success with. It might not lead to us finishing 17th every year, it might not get us promoted either but I think that's an approach that if communicated well would get the fans onside and would allow us to build something. Parma's right when he says incremental building is a bit of a chimera because if you build too slowly you lose assets too fast and if it goes too well too quickly a lot of players and staff struggle to keep pace but you aren't building anything if you want to go down the Crewe route of focusing mostly on developing talent for other clubs. Finishing 17th or above every year for a club like us is unrealistic and if all you want from the club is to be part of the PL gravy train then maybe it is the wrong club to support, but we should be able to have hope that the club is trying to punch above it's weight and that it wants it's own success. Turning into a Championship Crewe is basically an admission that we're not trying to compete anymore and are just existing. If there's little to hope for or get excited about then what's the point? Winning games becomes meaningless and then the dreaded apathy word comes back into the equation.

"or align yourself as a modern Crewe feeder club for Manchester City or similar. Similar like Arsenal (youth) reserves I suppose It’s a future. Of sorts. " This has been my big fear ever since we switched this this model that this is what we'd default to without an exceptional manager or a few quality players. We did really well in the first few years to find Farke and a couple of players who were too good for this level which got us a couple of promotions but I think the sad reality is the the base level of this model is milling about in Championship obscurity, playing some nice football but not really threatening promotion while existing mainly to produce players for other teams. If you're mentally over chasing success and just enjoy the day out at CR, watching some tidy football being played by a young team and knowing there's a half decent chance we'll win the game because of the level we're playing at then that might sound great, I know a lot of fans who would be quite happy with that existence but it doesn't appeal to me at all. Knowing that every year promotion would be a real long shot and that every player who's half decent will be gone after a season because they either play for Arsenal or will get moves to giant clubs like Bournemouth or Brentford just sounds depressing and pointless, like being every PL club's de facto B team. I feel like as a club we should aspire to be more than that. Crewe and Auxerre have their niche but they're much smaller clubs than us and I think existing as a higher level version of them would get really old, really quickly after a few mid table finishes and transfer windows where we lose key players. There's already an apathetic malaise around the fanbase that would only get worse in that purgatorial existence where there's nothing to hope for or get excited about and no player of any quality sticks around for very long. I'd rather we went all in on one of the extreme playing philosophy models and instead of focusing on youth and loans we signed and developed players purely with that playing style in mind, most fans would never accept another Hughton and we know where the glass ceiling of possession football leaves us but it's better than the alternative. Appointing someone with Knapper's CV suggests we're more likely looking at the Crewe approach and becoming a feeder club who's sole purpose is to produce players for other clubs and it's not something I'm remotely enthusiastic about.

You can't compare the stats in any other top league in Europe with those in the PL. Not only is it a much more physical league full of athletes, it's also played at a much faster pace with the bottom 14 or so teams adopting a much more pragmatic approach than the other top leagues. Plus the quality of all the the mid table and below clubs are miles better in the PL than they are in any other league. Our last two promoted squads would survive in La Liga or Ligue 1 but they were miles off in the PL. Players like PLM can excel for a mid to lower Ligue 1 club because the level is somewhere around top Championship and the football is slower and less end to end so it's much easier to win possession back against a team in Europe than it is here.

I'm deeply uncomfortable giving people their first ever head coach role no matter what personal qualities or qualifications they have. I should clarify I mean first head coaching role at any level, I wouldn't mind an ex youth head coach/manager whatever but I'd want them to have some experience as the manager of a team before hiring for the role here. I know Holt has done some coaching with young players but he's not been in charge of a higher age group/ been in charge of picking the team/been judged by results/having to deal with in game tactical tweaks/playing being unhappy at not being picked etc It's just too much of a risk to take on someone who's never been in that situation before. Up until around the mid 2000's picking a manager based on their personal qualities and how they see the game would have been fine because the tactical side of the game in this country was quite rudimentary by today's standards and it was more a case of commanding respect, putting square pegs in square holes, getting the team fit and motivating the players. At Championship level you could do quite well by just doing that (recall Warnock's any idiot could manage a team to mid table in division 1 comment) but nowadays you don't get far without having a good tactical brain and the ability to coach it into players. If someone like Holt had managed an u23 or non-league team to some success then maybe? But as we saw with Gunn just being a club legend that the players like really isn't enough. Though I'm not saying Holt is incapable of anything more than that, he might be?The point is that we don't know whether he is or not because he's not demonstrated that yet so it's too much of a risk. I also kinda feel like if he wanted a head coaching role at one of the youth levels here he would have got it at some point so there must be a reason why he hasn't chosen to or the club has passed on him. If he was the head coach at one level before I must not have noticed but again if he was really good at it you would have thought he would have progressed up the system to a later age group by now.

I'm really apathetic about the whole situation. Firstly looking at it short term I don't see any tactical tweaks you could do to turn this squad into promotion contenders. If you get a good motivator in who puts square pegs in square holes and gets us organised we'd look like a team that might challenge for the play offs but that's it. We have an unbalanced and inconsistent squad with too many injury prone and battle scarred players who don't work well together as a unit and all suit different styles of football. I can clearly see how you could make us a bit better but I think it would take a miracle worker to turn this group into promotion contenders. Secondly the new SD has no room to manoeuvre due to our financial situation. If he wants to do anything he'll have to sell one of Sara or Rowe just to balance the books and both to actually sign players and with what we'd have to spend at the end of it would only leave us weaker. We also don't have any money to appoint a head coach already in work so it'll either be someone out of work who has failed before or someone unproven in a youth set up. Next we know that Attanasio is a big fan of the model we currently employ so the strategy will likely revert back to the priority being bringing through young players and playing possession based football going forward. We know where the ceiling is for that even with a top class coach and Buendia-Pukki and it's between Championship and PL level. That means that as fans we have nothing to hope for or aspire to and as we're unlikely to find another Pukki-Buendia combo we'll just end up mid table Championship every year playing nice but ineffective football and selling our best players every year to balance the books. I don't see the appeal in bringing through young players if fans know they'll just be sold to giant clubs like Bournemouth or Brighton (if we're lucky) every year just to stay afloat. We have a certain reputation in the game now of failure at the top level which is gonna make it extremely hard to sign players if we do get promoted again which will mean that even with a great recruitment team and scouting network all of our top targets will turn us down even if we can afford them because none of them will want to be associated with a team that always gets relegated. You can argue the previous mitigating circumstances or that we'll have new people in charge or more money to spend in the future but players won't care about any of that. Norwich get relegated in the PL, that's all they'll know about us and all they'll care about and it will make it really hard for us to compete going forward because of the damage to our reputation our last two or three attempts have had. I could go on and on. I see our future as being like the Championship version of Auxerre or Crewe, existing solely to be a feeder club to richer and more ambitious clubs and I hate the thought of that existence. I want to see us go all out to win games and compete at the highest level we can but I don't get the sense from our owners that they want or are capable of delivering the same so I'm just wondering what's the point?

I don't think Wagner's the total clown that most others seem to think he is, but he's lost the players clearly so he needs to go. You need to be really motivated and well organized and to follow his tactical instructions to a tee or Wagner's system falls apart and that's what we're seeing now and why we'll struggle to pick up any points for the remainder of his time here. Because his approach is so specific and requires complete buy in from the players and to have them running through brick walls for him we'd struggle to pick up points against non-league teams right now as the players have given up never mind trying to pick up points against Championship opposition. He needed to go after the Sunderland game to be fair and it's an absolute joke that the club is throwing away another 3 points on Saturday by keeping him in post. I think in better circumstances and if he was a better man manager we'd be really enjoying watching a Wagner Norwich team but it's just not happened for him here. To me this seems like we've got a load of people who are supposed to be running the club that are all panicking right now and looking at each other in the absence of a clear leader and are waiting for Knapper to come in and take charge and make the hard decisions for them. It's kind of pathetic to be honest.

Would let them all go including Dimi who has been responsible for quite a few of the easy goals we've shipped over the last few years. Gibson, Dimi, Placheta, McCallum etc are decent Championship players but not at the wages we're paying them and the new SD deserves to be able to put his stamp on things alongside the new head coach so we need to ship out everyone we're currently over paying for even if they can do a job at this level because we have to get the wage bill down to give us some room to maneuver in the summer window.

Nobody wanted us to spend money for money's sake or hit a certain spending level to look like we had a go at PL level. We want the club to be able to back talented and successful managers when the opportunity presents itself. In that '21 window we spent more than we had to spend but didn't back the manager as it was well documented that we didn't go with the strategy that Farke wanted. To make that step up playing anything other than really ultra defensive football you do need a lot of money to spend but spending all you have on relatively expensive gambles on known players that others clubs have passed over isn't the right strategy or what the fans wanted either. I know fans were happy at the time but we trusted Webber and co to be able to identify what we needed, none of us could have known how immature Tzolis was, or that Sargent needs half a second more time to sort his feet out than he gets at PL level or that Normann would be a paper tiger of a player because we're not scouts. But if we went with the strategy that Farke wanted and got those 4 specific additions and it didn't work out then I guess none of us would have a right to complain that it didn't work out but that's not what we did, we gambled more than everything on flawed younger players in the hope they'd develop and plugged gaps with expensive loans that were well down our list of initial targets, no fans wanted that.

Won't be anyone in a job, we don't have the money to buy them out of their current club. Will likely be Pelach until the end of the season or permanently if we wins a few games early on. Whoever we do hire will know he'll have to sell his best players every season just so the club can stay afloat and he'll have to work with whatever he's given so that will drastically shorten the list of interested candidates. Longer term it'll probably be someone who's doing well with a youth team right now because that's how he'll be expected to build a team by using our academy. The fact that we chose a new SD for his role in developing young players at Arsenal is a big clue about the direction we're heading in. It won't be about results or promotion, just selling our best players to giant clubs like Bournemouth to balance the books.

According to Connor Southwell he's not been there for the last two home games for whatever reason so I guess this will just be standard for the rest of his time here, ignoring the noise and all that.

You can. It's hard however to motivate 30+ year olds to play a style of football that requires extremely fit, fast, energetic players though. I'm sure if you spoke to Duffy in a quiet room he would prefer not to be messing about with it at the back so much and playing such a high line but he was the best we could afford and is just doing what he's told. McLean is clearly motivated but he's being asked to do the job of two men which means he's tiring a lot which is why you see him jogging sometimes and catching a breather. I know Wagner likes Fassnatch and Hwang but they're not runners, they have no pace and they're no good at pressing so totally unsuited to the style of football. Onel is motivated and technically suited but he's having a bad year. So for me it's not motivation it's a lack of suitability to what they're being asked. If we could've done for Wagner what we did for Farke in his second season and signed him a load of younger players suited to his style I think we'd be in a much better place right now but as we're broke he has to make do with what he has. I've said in other threads we need a back to basics approach with the next manager. Not because I love organised, counter attacking football but because it suits our playing squad and budget and until we sort the finances out we need to give up the idea of a playing philosophy for a while because we can't afford to get the right players to suit it. This season and Farke's first were rubbish, not because they're terrible managers but because those types of coaches need specific players and if you can't afford to give it to them then get a more pragmatic manager who puts results first.

Wagner needs to go definitely and I think it's time for D&M to step aside before it starts getting toxic but everything going wrong right now goes back to what happened in our last PL season and that was all on Webber. We had some money by our standards and a wage bill nearly twice that of Brentford's to compete with and he just made the most nonsensical, stupid signings. The owners let him loosen the purse strings and every manager since then has had an unbalanced, injury prone, mentally fragile squad to work with so i don't blame them either. The whole recruitment team needs ripping up as well, Webber carries the can for employing them but whoever recommended Tzolis, Normann, Kabak, PLM, Rashica (for what we paid) etc better not be here anymore and if they are they're stealing a living. Even Sargent and Gilmour back in 2021 were absolutely stupid signings for what we needed at the time. Since then we've had to sell everyone and sign players on the cheap and Wagner's having to assemble a team out of the mess that's been created by his boss. The 3 in the pics deserve some blame definitely but they're not the root cause of this. Also as an aside I'm disappointed in Attanasio for not getting more hands on and getting stuck into this mess more. I know he wants to respect D&M's wishes but there comes a time when you have to assert yourself a bit and make an impact.

I wasn't on football forums during that era, was that really the case? I remember him being very hit and miss under Roeder and Gunn when put on the left wing in the Championship but I remember him being amazing nearly every game pretty much as soon as Lambert switched him to a no.10 in L1 and into the Championship. I had no idea people were debating his ability during those years I thought the consensus was that he was easily one of the best players in both divisions and unplayable on his day in those seasons.

There were defensive mistakes but the root cause of them was structural issues causing a lack of protection from midfield and asking our limited players to play a style beyond their ability. I feel sorry for Wagner to be honest. He has his style and he was hired to implement it here but due to the fact we have to sell and release players every year and can only replace them with free transfers or spend significantly less than our income because of 'running costs' he doesn't have a team capable of playing his way. With our extremely limited budget we're much better off hiring a more pragmatic manager who plays a style who suits the players he has instead of hiring a manager like Wagner who has one style and trying to sign players to make that approach work. But i don't think the fans or the owners would go for someone like that, we seem obsessed with the idea of having a philosophy and clear playing style but the fact is with our budget unless we pull of a couple of miracle signings again like Pukki/Buendia we can't afford to play that way. We can't even afford to attempt to sign a Buendia anymore either, 2/3m is well out of budget so it's unlikely that we'll find that special player to make us tick. If the ownership model isn't going to change then we need to change the way we operate on the pitch because it's just not working.

Always happy to see Chelsea lose because I hate them and it's funny to watch Birmingham implode under Rooney but I think in terms of positives that's about all I can think of today

Quality wise mid to upper Championship overall so shouldn't be playing like we're superior to other teams or anything too intricate because we're not good enough to do it. Type of player? Dimi, Stacey, Rowe, Placheta, Sainz = pace and directness and ability to run with the ball so we'd be good on the counter. Our CB's are all slow so shouldn't be playing too high and our strikers are the type who are much better when they have a bit of space so hitting teams on the break would suit them. they're not technically brilliant or have clever movement so would be better at finishing off crosses and cutbacks instead of receiving through balls or waiting for technical players to find them with a killer pass in a crowded penalty area.

Nah i've lost patience. I like his style of football in possession but we're just a mess without it. You shouldn't be relying on two extremely hard working forwards to make the pressing system work you should be able to coach any players into doing it, it's not skill based it's all mentality, work rate and coaching so it's on him if we're getting played through so easily. I like him, I like the fast counter attacks and wingplay but I've really reached my limit with us being so easy to play through and defensively useless. Our defence is putting us under so much pressure to the point it's affecting our attacking play by making us rush and force things and flap when we get chances. I don't wanna go back to the Hughton days but with the quality and type of player we have we need a coach that gets teams well organised, hard to beat and good on the counter.

He was really good in his couple of games before the last break which shows that he has potential and will be a good player but I completely agree with others that he's not ready yet and isn't having an impact in most games. I also agree that the game was crying out for Placheta though. Farke teams really don't like pace or players who run with the ball but despite his limitations I don't think Wagner is stupid so there must have been a reason why he wasn't put on. A slight injury, illness or maybe he's just been poor in training recently i dunno but there has to be a good reason for it.

No point changing manager until the new SD comes in and gets settled. If we sack Wagner before then it'll be Pelach who takes over and I don't think it helps our chances this season having the disruption and uncertainty of having a short term caretaker manager for a couple of months. It's only going to muddle things telling players to play Wagner's way, then Pelach's way for 5-10 games and then a new managers way through one season. Unless you're Watford it never works having that much disruption. If he goes it won't be until around the new year when Knapper has come in and assessed the situation.

I rate him in terms of potential but right now? Not so much. Everything he does is nearly brilliant but not quite. Almost every hollywood pass is just slightly over or under hit, almost every dribble just one player too many, he tries so hard to go and win a ball when the smarter thing to do would be to hold off and just wait for the right moment etc. I don't know how to describe him except that I always find myself thinking or saying 'ohh, nearly' whenever he tries to make things happen in a game. I think in a year or two's time he'll be a hell of a player at this level but right now he's not quite there yet.

Tried watching the Saville drama because I was morbidly curious about how Steve Coogan would play the role but I only made it an episode and a half in before I had to turn it off. That is seriously grim. We all know the stories but actually seeing it play out like that was just too much for me. I think it's a good thing that this show was made because it might wake a few people up to horrors like this that occur far too often in real life but I just can't bear to watch it knowing that it actually played out similarly in real life. I have a really high tolerance to messed up things so long as they're fiction but knowing this actually happened just made it unbearable.