vos

[quote user="Doctorsleep"]We should play our best available team, if the manager knows what that is, and try to get a good confidence boosting result. Forget about bringing youngsters through ATM, we need to re-establish confidence in the team, an attribute which currently is woefully lacking[/quote] Precisely. From Hughton''s viewpoint he desperately needs this win. If things go wrong the fans will not accept some lame excuse.

We fielded a much more attacking unit which in general worked out quite well. It was the correct tactics knowing that the Villa defence is very average and they rely on three fast forwards who our back four should have coped with. We put several good moves together and despite the critics Snodgrass and Martin generated several good moves down the right. The problem time and again was the final delivery and general lack of confidence near the penalty area to some extent due to our normal reliance on defensive play. IF we had scored from the penalty it could well have been an emphatic win. At Stoke I would retain the same team with Ryan Bennett and Hooper starting.

Surprised at the support for Pilkington. I thought once again he had a few good spells but was largely anonymous. Has ability, but just does not get involved enough.

Agree with Nutty re Snodgrass. He was continually in the game and involved with most moves in the secondhalf. Unfortunately too many crosses were gifts for the keeper to collect and Snoddy seemed unable to adjust. Lambert had obviously done his homework on Redmond and the lad was never given any space and was largely ineffective. Pilkington when he came on never really came in to the game. I actually liked the attacking line up and to me Fer and Howson had good games. Yes, we missed the maruading Johnson as a defensive midfielder, but you cannot have it both ways. It was a poor penalty and bearing in mind the manner in which Snoddy strikes a ball, most people would have predicted where he would place it. Sadly it was at a nice height for the keeper. We did not really have any luck in their penalty box, partly because the final ball on many occasions lacked quality. The lack of any forward play in the last game certainly does not help the confidence of the main forwards, and this clearly shows. Finally dare I say it. RVW does not look Premiership Quality on performances to date. Hope he show us what he can do with some better service.

What''s new. A Club has a bad run, some new signings do not bring home the goods, relegation follows, so someone has to be the scapegoat. Much was made of the fact that Chase was purchasing shares at an apparent cheap price. As regards a private company, where there is no sizeable market, then the price is very much on the basis of what  a willing purchaser and seller are prepared to settle upon. Chase was under no obligation to divulge any other info and it appears in fact that he was a buyer when the Club had financial problems. Bearing this in mind coupled with the strong possibility that he also personally guaranteed the Club''s debt to the Bank then I would have thought he showed tremendous commitment to the Club. All the fuss about his Building Company being paid for technical matters is no big deal. I suspect his company did quite a bit of maintenance work. What''s wrong with that !! In the good old days most Clubs were financed and run by local businessmen and the most they got out of it was that they were well regarded amongst the local community. Look at the assortment of people who now control our football clubs. Many are simply involved because they had to move money to this country to escape potential problems in their own homeland, plus there are many who have loaded the football clubs with massive debt. Chairmen and managers are rarely praised when results go their way, but have a bad spell, then many supporters are unforgiving. By the way Chase is strongly criticised by selling players which led to relegation. If that is true, how come last season QPR spent a fortune on new players and supposedly had a great manager, but still got relegated!! Compared with the present crop of people who run football, or more precisely ruin English Football, Robert Chase is whiter than white. He had many successfull years at Carrow Road. He had to adopt sharp business practices to survive but there is not a hint of dishonesty in his dealings.

On his day Pilks is our best winger and packs a powerful shot. Unfortunately for me he plays in fits and starts and has too many periods of being anonymous - particularly in the second half. Does not possess anything like the workrate of Snodgrass - but would accept a player cannot be perfection at everything. I do not really see him improving further and has fairly frequent minor injury problems. I would let him go for say £6 million plus.

Generally agree but a few observations: Ruddy - looks back to his best. Very reassuring how he comes out and deals with crosses in to the box. When releasing ball from hands to clear repeatedly sliced to the right. Do not think this was intentional. Bassong - A little hesitant in dealing with high balls but superb on the ground with several examples of clever footwork. Never flustered. Johnson - Always busy and closing down. Very good workrate.  Needs to improve passing and make more use of the simple ball in to space to better passers. Snodgrass - Worth a 7 in view of workrate and covers a lot of ground in providing cover for defence. Agree crossing needs to be a bit better. The latter comment could refer to other players. The Wolf - Early days and it is clear he needs to adjust to the physical side of the English Game. Will definitely need some bustling support up front. Will be very interesting to see how he is performing after say another 5 games. Overall. We are looking much more positive this term (apart from the Hull debacle). Four up front on many occasions. In the first half in particular that Whittaker was quite well forward with Turner playing more to the right to cover. 1,3,3,4 !!! Has CH been reading this website.  

I agree with the Great Mass Dictator. You have to make adjustments to take in to account the personnel you have available. RVW has already shown clearly to me he is not going to make any great impact solely on his own up front. He needs the support of another more robust striker whereupon we could see a lot more goals. So for me playing either Hooper or Elmander more forward than Hoolahan would be worth a try.

[quote user="GJP"][quote user="vos"]  Bennett looked very composed and I think I would start with him against the Saints. [/quote] He had a good game but who would you drop out of Whittaker, Martin and Turner? [/quote] Good question. Either Martin or Turner. Nothing much in it but with a possible new look defence I think Martin would be the better organiser.

I do not think I said we were deliberately negative and I would accept it would have been better to state that we lacked creativity, guile and attacking quality. My main point is that in the first half when Hull went down to 10 men we seemed to lack any urgency to take the game to them and gain the initiative. We were certainly not positive !!

Would more or less agree with Gingerpele. Bassong not fully fit and took some pretty tough knocks. Beginning to look a little injury prone to me. Bennett looked very composed and I think I would start with him against the Saints. Elmander appeared more in the Holt style of strikers but I suspect Hughton will not start him with the Wolf. Hoolahan very disappointing. He had plenty of space and yet time and time he failed to release promptly to others who had taken up attacking positions. Lost possession quite a lot and was regularly muscled off the ball. He was much the same against Everton and I feel he slows us down. A very entertaining game, helped by the visitors, but difficult to fully assess our performance due to their lowly league status. As to Saturday I would definitely start with Fer, Olsson, Elmander and Pilkington.

Judging from the extended highlights it did appear that at least for the remainder of the first half against 10 men we still stuck to two lines of a defensive four. Hughton''s usual preferred line up. This was despite Hull showed little attacking intent. In my humble opinion that is "negativity".

Yes we are already "getting at Hughton" because after an encouraging start against Everton with more positivity i.e. Bennett,Redmond and Whittaker, the Hull game was an immediate return to last year''s boring negative tactics. Once Hull went down to ten men we should have grabbed the initiative but there was clearly no plan or idea of how to achieve this. It seemed that we will just tick over to halftime, have a chat and then do something about it. When we eventually went on all attack, about 20 mins from the end it was far too late, as Hull had settled for massed defence which is difficult to break down. I do not think the absence of several "better players" would have made a scrap of difference. After all we had some new signings at considerable cost playing and they had little impact. Why - its not so much the players, its the usual tactics etc are not good enough. As most commentators noted, we have no guile.

I would play the team which is likely to start against Southampton. After the Hull debacle it would be a good opportunity to restore some confidence and show some creative ability and score some goals. With most of the top teams playing twice a week this should be no problem re tiredness etc. Will Hughton do it ?? I doubt it, as it is clearly the blindingly obvious !!!

In my last comment I said "When a very very average Hull side went down to 10 men, for the rest of that half Hughton made no adjustments. So time and time again we saw screen shots of our rigid eight man, two lines of defence, dealing with three Hull players" In today''s Pink Un Hughton says "I''m very disappointed not to get anything out of the game and I think on reflection that was down to our first half performance. We let the tempo of our game drop and we didn''t threaten their goal enough for the amount of the ball we had" Precisely - and why the hell did he not do something about it at the time. An old pensioner supporter saw the problem in 2 minutes but the manager and his abundance of coaches did not appear to see fit to do anything about it until it was far too late. Mind boggling !!!! I rest my case.

Reading this interesting discussion I totally disagree with T and am more inclined to support the views of Purple. I have played and watched local football and first saw the Canaries in 1948 !!! I do not have a clue as to how you coach a player or how you make him understand your tactics. But football is a very simple game and an individual Premiership player should be capable of being a good team player and having reached that level should perform with a bit of fine tuning and encouragement from the likes of Lambert/Culverhouse. When Lambert was in charge I invariably agreed with his team selection and tactics and he was successfull because he allowed young up and coming players to express themselves and give their all for 90 minutes. Having now had the benefit of watching extended TV highlights of yesterday''s game I can only say the manager and his coaches decisions were very poor. As has been regularly stated, Howson is no right sided player and Fer is not suited to playing just behind the striker. It is blindingly obvious that The Wolf cannot play as a sole front man and will need someone up front with him. Most sides play with two big powerful centre backs and without continual support he will make little progress. I would have thought this was abundantly clear from reports from the pre-season games. When a very, very average Hull side went down to 10 men, for the rest of that half Hughton made no adjustments. So time and time again we saw screen shots of our rigid eight man,two lines of defence, dealing with three Hull players. Clearly we needed more attacking intent in the second period but Snodgrass was not the answer. He is a good reliable player but he does not have the pace to get behind fullbacks which was needed in the circumstances. I cannot recall Whittaker, a good attacking fullback, barely supporting the attack. Why !!! Young Redmond is a promising player, but again if he is in a good crossing position with a top quality striker in the box, try and find him rather than come inside and lose the ball. Otherwise he will be another Wright-Phillips, Lennon etc. I readily accept that a 10 man defence is not easy to penetrate. I believe not so long ago the great Barcelona had no idea. But with 30 minutes to go there was no real reason not to  push the likes of Russell Martin up front to ruffle the defenders and show more attacking intent. As the Sky commentator said we lacked any inventiveness and were far too predictable when it came to the last quarter of the pitch. Finally another non-coaching matter, we did not show sufficient desire to win the game.

I am still very much with Dr Zeuss on this one. It is not a case of looking for something to moan about. The Royal Norfolk Show has massive support from the county and provides an opportunity to show the best of Norfolk. It is also an occasion for various local clients to meet the people behind the business. As anyone who attends the Club''s AGM will know the Chairman is very much in the "we are in the big league now" and we all know that virtually all of big business is all about making quick bucks coupled with non-existent service. Several local companies, Archant in particular, made great efforts to welcome and talk to their customers. You would have thought the Club, with all their money, would have taken the opportunity to treat the youngsters to a little amount of competition and chat to their very, very highly paid players. Plus some freebies. All we saw was a cheap outfit selling mainly over stocked goods. The impression clearly was we are not bothered but will merely make a token appearance. By the way to hear that despite an attendance of 90,000 plus, there was only a camera went missing over the two days, speaks volumes for the people of Norfolk. Pity the Football Club could not join in the atmosphere of the event.

Completely agree. Certainly not one of the better stands on the day. Seemed to be manned by some youngsters who were trying to sell some fairly cheapish looking stuff. No form of greeting by anyone in authority and overall hugely disappointing effort from a multi million pound Premier Club. Was it the Youth Cup or the FA Cup on display ???

It was a different era but for me the one and only Barry Butler. One of the heroes of the great cup run. Could look after two strikers by himself.

Just cannot believe that on the eve of a very big match he mainly goes on about the strength and quality of the opposition. Whilst he comes over as being articulate I tend to think any comments regarding his team are fairly meaningless. I have come to the conclusion he continually praises our opponents to suggest they are so good merely to save him mentioning that he and his coaches have failed miserably to move us on. OK lets hope we scrape a win tomorrow, but I would still want to replace him at the season end as I just cannot see him making any improvement next season.

I cannot really see the defence is much better than last season. After Man City, goals conceded will be very little different and this will be despite a negative defensive approach and two DM. What is also clear over last few games is that Bassong is carrying an injury and is a bit of the pace and unusually hesitant.

Agree he is a bit overrated but have to say I thought he showed some movement off the ball and we looked to have more attacking options as of late. Unfortunately in common with others he has lost all confidence when it comes to the final ball etc. Does have spells when he tends to disappear for a while. It was interesting to read the comment that every time he received the ball he was facing the wrong way. You can again relate this to all of our players and this is a serious defect which has actually stunted our attacking play all season. There is simply a lack of ability or coaching whereby our passing is short to players heavily marked and playing the ball in space in front of a player is seldom seen. Yesterday Garrido stood in the opponents half with acres of space but rarely did he receive a decent pass.

Morty - I accept the responses you have made. But with the best will in the world I just cannot see Hughton making any changes in his approach which will satisfy the wishes of even the most undemanding supporter. I desperately hope we are not relegated, but I just have no confidence in the man changing his tactics to make us a force even in a lower division. He is so cautious and negative that for arguably the biggest game of the season he left our commanding international goalkeeper out of the team.

Morty states that "there was a general consensus that supporters were behind Hughton". I honestly do not think that has been the view over recent months. Like many, I initially thought his appointment had been well thought through and he would be as good as we could obtain. Having said that at the time I had little idea of his style of play or achievements. However the moment I saw our new style in the pre-season friendly against Ajax I was shocked to see such a massive change compared with the previous season. We set out with two rigid lines of defensive players who clearly had been coached to hold this formation and there was little inventive our attacking play evident. Yes, it was quality opposition, and needless to say we gained a home draw. Time and time again in the second half of a game this season we have seen Hughton consulting with Trollope as to how to change things, but nothing happens until it is far too late. The most disappointing aspect is that apart from John Ruddy not one player has improved this season. I do not go along with the comments that his interviews are articulate, he always avoids any reasoned answer about his team and merely says how good the opposition are.

Could not disagree more. Bearing in mind it was a win which should keep his team in the premiership I thought it was a very reasonable response. I wish our current manager would show more enthusiasm rather standing with hands in pocket and appearing to have little feel of events unfolding in front of him. At end of game Lambert shook hands with most of our players and indicated to his supporters that the plaudits should be directed to their players. I see in the Press that Lambert again referred to the unacceptable treatment he received from the Club last season. It would be very interesting if someone shone some light on this. The only matter which comes to mind is that McNally received a massive bonus whereas the real person who masterminded our success was Paul Lambert.