I've popped on here just to add my two-penneth. Long standing blades fan - Season ticket holder and have seen our two teams games for the past two seasons. Look, you have some decent players and probably play more attractive football to the armchair football purist - we simply play effective football better than most if not all. What we don't play, and this isn't aimed at you lot is long ball. I saw long ball with Dave Bassett at the Lane and a better phrase is channel football - put it in the channels and pick up the second balls. Our S6 neighbours did it, we've done it, others have done it and others will continue to do it. We quite simply don't - we do hit diagonals to our wing backs when other teams formations allow. It simply isn't long ball football - it's a long pass played with precision for the ultimate purpose of creating a quick overload. This is what fans of other teams do not see. I was at the game on Saturday and you played some nice football (as always), but your defence is rubbish. It was last season but being as good as you were going forward then, it masked your problem which has been highlighted this season by the extra quality in the Premier League. You have two centre halves that are average. You have a couple of extremely good fullbacks who are great pushing up, but are average at defending. We found bucket loads of space around Aarons and to a lesser extent with Lewis on Saturday and the game should have been finished by half time. It wasn't put to bed by half time and it gave you the thought and opportunity to push on us second half seeing as it was only one nil. Looking at last season, i'd have taken 4 or 5 of your players to put straight into our team and considering what's happened this season, you'll probably have to lose Cantwell, Buendia and Aarons after you've (probably) gone down. £90/100m for the three should soften the blow and perhaps replace with players capable of getting you out in one season and staying next time - but, you MUST make your defence more stable. Our stable defence is why we are staying in this league. Our midfield is extremely well drilled and significant in quality to be pretty decent. Of course we are no world beaters, but the team always outweighs individuals. The reason why we are good can be summed up in two instances on Saturday. Take a look at Lundstram who crossed for Billy Sharp to score - but don't watch Lundstram - watch Basham on his outside that made your player in front of Lundstram check as he was then going to track Basham, giving Lundstram the freedom to cross at his leisure. This is what we work on consistently in training and in the game on Saturday was ultimately the goal that won the game. Teams will not work us out, because we practice it so much and the opposition simply don't work on it that much to combat it. We are as Wilder keeps saying, relentless in our approach to games. We'll also get better as our training ground is rebuilt in the summer, where one of the main points of improvement will be video analysis of both ourselves and the opposition. The second issue in the game was one occasion where Egan pushes forward from centre of the back three - Fleck instinctively dropped into his centre back position to cover, therefore leaving no gaps. We are extremely well drilled and switched on - these are not thick footballers, it takes intelligence and good coaching. Not enough emphasis is given to our first team coach, Alan Knill. He's always watching football games to learn from others, so it's not all about Wilder as the press and opposition fans likes to say. Our issue in progressing for me is up top and where to find £30/40m for a striker and persuading them to come. For you, I think as much as you might like your defenders, it's an area you must play attention to next season. Sort that, keep Farke and you could bounce straight back. As fans i've seen some of you slag off your directors/owners due to lack of funds - of course they wanted to stay in the division but took a bit of a gamble. The gamble probably won't pay off - but Prem money, parachute payments plus the inevitable player sales could pave your way to come back and be stronger. Burnley appear to have written that manual themselves, perhaps you have to keep Farke and therefore continuity and see where it takes you. Bungay (long time in the past), South of Norwich holds a special place with me - i'll look forward to more Adnams in the future! All the best.
UTB & FTP. The FTP is an education for you - it means F**K the Pigs (our S6 neighbours). We don't hate Norwich by the way, we have no reason to - it's just the banter - lets keep it that way in the future.
