TeemuVanBasten

A big dose of common sense.

There must be some excellent drugs in the Midlands and Cumbria at the moment.

There is no decent homegrown centre back available unless Djorou has been keeping himself fit (homegrown as came through at Arsenal). Has been keeping Timm Klose out of the Switzerland team for years.

I'm resigned to us getting a hammering now, I'm just pinning my hopes on fantasy football to provide a silver lining. Sterling and Pukki are in my side, so if the Flying Finn can grab a consolation goal that would be nice. I think it will be 6-1, Man City will ease off by taking 2 or 3 top players off early once the game has been won. If they really fancied making a statement it could be worse.

Does that injury news change your idea for beating Man CIty Lakey? Controlling possession with Leitner, Vrancic and Trybull out injured? It means we're probably going to have to play Tettey and McLean in the middle of the park, reckon that will be good enough to keep hold of the ball against the reigning champions?

Absolutely not, if there's any inkling of him still carrying an injury then we wrap him in cotton wool and use him for the next fixture which is winnable.

Agree, Zimmermann was rushed back. If anything West Ham saw a player strapped up and thought it would be a good idea to give him a clobber and take him out of the game. Not saying they would have wanted him out until January, but with no centre backs on the bench and him going off early in the cup game it was always going to be worth a yellow card to them to do that (which the ref didn't even give!).

I'd be more interested in knowing how many senior centre backs clubs have registered to be honest. Just looked at Aston Villa and Newcastle and they both appear to have 5? Also, Godfrey didn't actually have to be registered so we've only registered 3.... we could have allocated 4 senior spots to Centre backs no problem?

We did know that Zimmermann was going to miss pre-season + the start of the season though, and that Klose has had prior ankle and knee injuries, so going with 4 was a known risk that looks like it is backfiring. Depending on just how good Amadou is at centre back I guess, we did sign him in the knowledge that he could play there but pretty sure he was signed to avoid having to use Tettey.... and now we're going to have to play Man City with Tettey.

I believe that we are 2 players short of a full 25, so there was room for 2 more players if we want to get technical. Most teams name 25. So its potentially a valid criticism, that we had room in the squad for more even if loans.

So basically we want to put out a weakened side against Man City without the controversy and FA inquiry that would follow a Liverpool complaint that if we didn't announce all these injuries beforehand. Probably a good idea.

It's because most of us are sane. But I'm finding this all very tedious now so I'm turning it off.

A thread about England's greatest current footballer has become a thread about some bloke from Cumbria. Common occurrence, and that's why people tell you to F off.

If Aarons is fit then perhaps what we should do is actually start Byram, get him to kick Sterling a couple of times but the plan being to perhaps get a yellow for 2nd or 3rd offence. Then switch him out for Aarons, who will have a slightly easier time against a bruised player who may not quite fancy it as much. Could backfire if Byram goes straight in with the two footed lunge from behind though, may need to practice this on the training ground. Wouldn't want him to practice on a fellow Norwich player of course, I nominate Lake District Canary!

The thread asks how we stop Raheem Sterling. You couldn't even be bothered to watch him tear Kosovo apart last night, so why should we value your input? You weren't even the first to answer the question yet alone the only person, another poster suggested we kick him. That's a perfectly valid suggestion and its clearly what West Ham did when they decided to go in hard on a strapped up centre back, knowing that we had none in reserve. That's not what I'd do for morale reasons, we're better than that, but its likely more effective than just saying "don't give away the ball" when that's literally what every footballer for every team in the world tries to do every Saturday. We're playing possibly the best team in the world, they have 4 possibly 5 world class players, that's more than Barcelona or Real Madrid possess. That's like saying "kick the ball in the net more times than them" if somebody asked the question "how do we beat Man City". It is a ludicrous answer. How do you become a millionaire Lakey? That's easy, sell 1000 things, each for £1000 profit. Oh, why didn't I think of that? If selling 1000 things for £1000 profit was easy then we'd all be millionaires, just like if stopping Man City from getting the ball was easy they wouldn't have won the Premier League last season.

??? You are talking on this thread about not giving the ball away against Man City, and you are citing a game in which we allowed Man Utd to dominate possession, soaked up pressure for most of the game and hit them on the counter attack with two goals completely against the run of play (or capitalise, as you say). Those are simply two entirely different footballing ideas. But then you turned off an 8 goal game because you found it boring, so that may explain why you don't understand the difference between possession based football and sitting deep and looking to break, you would need to be interested enough in football to actually watch some games to understand the basics

You get insulted because you constantly talk out of your ****. First you admit that Man City are far better at keeping possession. Then you say you want a Man Utd 2005 type of performance. But then you want us to win the game by keeping hold of the ball. Well if Man City are far better at keeping hold of the ball, then pray tell how are we going to win it back from them? To keep the ball we need to get the ball. And we beat Man Utd in 2005 not by dominating possession but by hitting them on the counter attack with Shackell and Fleming soaking up pressure all day. We also beat Man Utd in 2015 by allowing them to dominate possession and then hitting them on the break. So you want us to play patient possession based counter attacking football? That makes sense to nobody but you. You are just talking guff. And the reason we should call you out on it is because them lot down the road read this forum and we can't laugh at their moronic fans when they can come on here and read this load of rancid shart. I'd agree that the only chance we've got is to hit them on the break, if that's what you are saying, bit it's not is it. You are sitting here suggesting we dominate possession against possibly the best team in the world. It's just ludicrous and in my opinion worthy of the insults.

It could, but there's more chance of Jacob Rees-Mogg opening a food bank in Hartlepool.

You were literally Hughton's biggest fan and yet he'd hold a press conference to wax lyrical about opposition players, talk about how tough it will be and then try and defend all game. Now you are criticising fans for your pointing out that Sterling is a bit good and advocating that we take the game to them. You've got no credibility, your position is always just to go against the grain on here to establish yourself as the one with the minority view. Just for attention, possibly because your wife and dog don't give you enough. At least Adrian Durham gets well paid to talk crap all day.

The crazy Cumbrian will get the last laugh when he channels his inner belief and 'transmits' those supersonic laser atoms into our players on Saturday, because he has surely put his life savings on a Norwich win? Perhaps if we're all super positive tonight we can magic Zimmermann's injury better? Somebody bring the robes, Lake District Canary leads the chanting, I can't think of a better animal to sacrifice for this ritual than a horse. A Suffolk horse.

Have you ever considered phoning James O'Brien at LBC to talk about Brexit?

I disagree, two time World Cup winning Brazilian Ronaldo was a gift from the football god's and the best number 9 we've ever seen.

There's not a single Norwich fan on here who doesn't want to see us win, so why do you feel the need to even state that? By the way, Man Utd finished 3rd and 18 points off top that season. They were not the Man City equivalent at that time. They finished 6 points off second, won nothing and got knocked out of Europe early.

He isn't even the best Ronaldo to have played the game.

I'm not of your generation by the looks of it, but Luis Suarez has been the recent equivalent. In a strange way felt honoured to see a genuine world class player at the top of his game on two occasions. Just completely unplayable. Weird one but Tim Shepherd testimonial, Henrik Larsson had that special aura about him. Just one of those players that looked like that had more time and space than everybody else, because of how effortless it was for him and his superior reading of the game. Only perhaps half a dozen Premier League players at any given time are next planet good and I think Man City have three or four of those.