Yellowfuture

I would be very dissapointed if Spillane at least doesnt start. When Chris M got into the team last season it was good to see some young blood and Grant got a lot of credit for bringing him on, where is this desire now to develop our young players? Grant has exactly the same mentality as Worthy, only play the youngsters when there is no other alternative and them drop them irrispective of perfromance as soon as a more senior player is available. If you earn the shirt by performing well then you should keep it, Brellier needs to know that his indiscipline will will not be rewarded, Grant talks about the need for players to have to have competition for places, well Mr B should have to compete for his shirt. 

Play this team on Saturday and keep playing it as long as it does well in the league. Some of our prima dona`s need to look at themselves and recognise that we pay their wages and expect them to perform. Grant has found out about some of the young guys by mistake. It happened with Martin last season and it has happened again now. For Gods sake Grant learn this time and go with the young aspirational pro`s.  

I think your right. We have a squad of 37 but of those only about 20 stand any real chance of getting a game. Yes Grant does see them in training but that isn`t the same as seeing them in a match.They could look great on the training pitch and be poor in a competative game and the reverse. Grant is rapidly approaching the point of fear of failure, if the season goes on like this he will become more and more paralised by the fear of a loss and less and less likely to take a risk. This is the doomsday senario we all wanted to avoid, a relegation battle?  

[quote user="jas the barclay king"][quote user="Graham Humphrey"] He gets a lot of stick on here and I can''t really see why. Okay, so he hasn''t scored for us yet, but his perfomances have been good this season. He''s good in the air, works very hard and can hold the ball up. He certainly isn''t a natural goalscorer as he proved yesterday - he needs to be more ruthless in front of goal. Whether that''s a confidence thing or not I don''t know, but there are positions he gets in where other players would have a shot at goal but he decides to pass it instead. This, however, doesn''t make him a bad player. And he had a better game than Cureton, who was practically anonymous, but how many people slag him off? I''ve seen virtually no criticism of him at all. I''m guessing I''d be lynched if I dared to criticise him in any way. Some players are just scapegoats (like Doherty who had a reasonable game) and will get stick no matter what and will be blamed for all our problems. Sadly Brown also appears to be one of them. [/quote] whens he going to put the ball in the net?  if he gets to 20 games for us and hasnt scored you''ll still be happy will you? i wont be! yetserday he had 3 chances, a header he headed back accross goal to Cureton, another one he opted to chest when he could of smacked it in.. and the shot in the last minute he put wide.....  If the ball dropped to him in the last minute of a crucial Promotion/rlegation game which we HAD to win and it was 0-0 you''d bank on him to score would you? Rob Rosario "held the ball up well" too i seem to remember.. and he was Sh*te too! jas :) [/quote] Have to agree with Jaz, I think Brown started off the season well, I backed him all the way but I think his performances have gone a bit backwards rather than showing continued improvement. What really concerned me yesterday was that he didnt show any real striker instincts and when he had chances made the wrong decisions, his confidence is clearly low but things wont improve for him if he shirks the oppertunity to have a go himself.

I agree with all this stuff but wouldnt it have been nice to see earnie play with this team.

[quote user="NCFC_Chris"]i think the fact he has "his" squad now and far more options than he did last season has enabled him to change games from the bench, Chris Martin wasn''t even able to get a place in the 16[/quote]   So far so good. Thanks to the summer he now has players he can bring on to change a game without weakening the team. Good tactical decision that paid off on Saturday!

[quote user="Rudolph Hucker"]Branston Pickle wrote I''d certainly say that from the c10 mins that DTS had on the pitch yesterday he looked promising - several flick-ons, some good possession and decent play which suggest that he might be finding his feet and looking quite good too.     This was my view too, thanks BP. [/quote] Yep, as I said on another thread, yesterday was the first time I`ve seen him close up, sitting near the sake pit my previous sitings of him have been down the other end of the pitch. He has pace, is a stong runner and appears to have good feet, I think he will turn out to be a star by the end of the season, lets hope I`m right. 

[quote user="The Penguin"] I have never been a huge fan of Fozzy, but today i thought he was awesome, really changed the game when he came on, hopefully he will be back soon, and prove me wrong. I also thought Drury had a great game today, and handled Wright -Phillips really well. [/quote] Fozzy completely changed the game for us today, very good decision by Grant to bring him on. At last we can bring on players who are as good as those already on the field to change things. Too many times last season subs only made things worse. I have woried in the past about his lack of pace but today we did see the creative side of him and he was pretty good. Lets hope the injury isn`t serious. First close look I`ve had at Stiker today, I saw him against West Ham and I think Barnet but he was down the wrong end of the pitch, saw him close up today and to me he looks to have terrific potential, hard running, pace, reasonable feet,  I think by the end of the season he wil be a bit of a star.

This is a very good post mate, does set some context for the club and gets me thinking more about the history of the club.I freely admit that I was not around these parts 12 years ago and didnt really support anyone with any great passion at that time. I was aware of City and thought of them as a big club from my little home in South Wales,I never knew then I would be living here and supporting the Club. I suspect you and Cluck are right, that there are many like me who are relatively recent supporters, in my case season ticket holder for the last 6 years. I have enjoyed some great times home and away in that time and Norwich City will be in my blood for the rest of my life. I guess that doesnt make me now any more or less of a supporter than anyone else, I believe my views on what goes on at the club are as valid as someone who has lived here all their life and supported the club all that time. Nevertheless it does help me understand where some of you guys are coming from and that negativity is not always a reaction to whats happening now but is set against a context of what was and what you have experienced before I was even here. Well done! 

Spot on mate, Drogba looked a total waste of money when Chelski played us at home, look at him now, we must give  new players time to settle. I think Grant is a pretty good judge and would expect him to have signed someone  who will cut it> 

I have been taking my two boys since the youngest was six, they are now 15 and 13. My wife for some strange reason has also started showing an interest and has had a season ticket for the last couple of years. My eldest boy spent 4 years in the NCFC accademy and we got a lot of inside info from that. We are fanatical NCFC fans, the type of family that Smudger et al seem to think are ruining the club, to that I say Bollo.ks, my kids are the future of the club and they know enough about football, particularly the accademy boy to be as supportive or critical as the rest. Last couple of years I have wondered why we bother to go, it costs me £1K  a year. I feel pretty good about this season so lets hope for something good.

I am a supporter of Peter |Grant big time, I think he has done a good job in dificult circumstances. I am prepared to accept that he is new to management and will make mistakes, who doesnt, but he slagged off the fans last season, probably with some justification, but should not have done it publicly and had to back pedal, there was the slagging off of Hucks. which again I suspect he regretted afterwards. Yes I want a manager who is passionate and believes in the club,but he must be careful to learn from his mistakes, he has a go at Curiton for being unprofessional but I think is being unprofessioal himself. There is a time when a manager probably has no alternative but to have a public go at the players, we are nowhere near that situation, I think he has over-reacted.Learn for your mistakes Mr Grant, dont keep repeating them!

Thanks very much

[quote user="ricky knight"]Its easy to pick on the Doc but the whole defensive unit need looking at imo.[/quote]   Quite right. We love to find scapegoats on here and in the crowd. Some idiot in the Thorpe area was hurling abuse at Doc last night and then looking really pleased with himself, what a tos.er. The defensive performance from the whole team was cr.p, it`s not just the back four or one indevidual. Character assination by the crowd will only make the team weaker. Grant knows we have a problem and I am sure is trying to bring in the right players,but he also needs to look at the way we defend. Doc did have a nightmare last night but we kept a clean sheet on Saturday and he was playing then. If you want to criticise, Shaks should come in for some, and Drury and even the Saviour David Marshall who was not great. Brellier will make a difference but we must not be hoodwinked into thinking that he is the soluion to a much more widespread problem in the way we defend as a team.

Chris brown wasnt fully fit last season and his play reflected that. He has trained very hard over the summer and is a lot stronger and more physical than he was before, I saw him come on and play well against West ham in the second half and he had a good game tonight. He is winning plenty in the air where last season he was not getting to the ball and he is holding it up well. He is young and improving and if he keeps this up will be a great partner for Jamie this season.I think we have a good combination up front with those two and if they stay fit they will score a lot of goals between them in this League. Curiton will get the lions share of the goals but the assists are just as important in a partnership.

Peter Grant sitting down and not shouting and waving his arms, Neal Adams taking a less defensive attitude to all things Carrow Road, must be a new season.Neal Adams was becoming the focus of Canary call too often last season, people were more interested in having a go at him and his pro-club stance than talking football. Last season he would have been very focussed on the fact that we hadnt conceded and failure to attack effectively would have been excused, not so today. Personally I think a stomach virus will have effected todays performance in terms of selection, preparation and fitness. Lets give the boys the benefit of the doubt and look forward to the next game. Still need at least one more CB though.

Didn`t  hear homophobic chants about Ashton but with the short blond hair I`m not surprised he created some close attention. I dont want to hear any ex City player booed, but I was speaking with a mate about it after the game and his take was that Ashton didnt try for us in his last season, until that is the transfer window opened when he played great and was transformed. That attitude is bound to lead to bad feeling and the more I think about it the more I think he deserved it.

I was embarresed to be a City fan last night. There was a crowd of 22000, the away fans totally dominated the noise and I felt like was in an away ground. OK it was only a friendly bit if we are going to create a big away fans area then we need to ensure there is a home area that will create some atmosphere. Having Hammers all over the ground was not a good idea, it made the whole atmosphere unreal, ok it was a freindy but West Ham were treating it like a big game and we just sat back and let it happen. The only possible upside was the bird who was encouraged to get her tts out for the lads in the snake pit bit in the end failed to deliver.

I didnt take the easy option to write him off last season, we had not seen enough of him when fully fit to make a judgement, fair enough if Smudger et al. want to make snap decisions on players they dont watch, for me I want a bit of time to make my mind up. I think Grant is a pretty good judge of a player on the whole and he saw potential in Brown. What we always seem to overlook is the age of some of these guys and if managed and coached well they will improve.Last night Brown made a big contribution, he looks stronger and much fitter than last season. Only one half, and a lot of motivation to play for your place, but if this continues then he will do well against Championship defenders. The question is will he be able to find a consistant run of form, lets hope so. I thought Crofty looked a lot fitter last night and fast, he made quite a big impact and will be a very good sub for us next season, not many left backs will want to face him. The final ball was still dodgy but I think there was some improvement.  I hope we are not going to see another period of Chris Martin on the right. This is not his position and Grant must surely see this. Showed good touches last night but as has been said earlier, a concerning overall lack of pace and ability to capitalise on a quick brake.     

He`s not in the official photo today and that is probably that. Is it such a big loss? I can remember him a couple of seasons ago when he was the fans favourite and without doubt made a huge contribution. I dont recall one great performance from him last season, Africa Cup, Ramadin, injury, too tired to play etc. nothing memorable here. If he became again the player he was then yes, a great loss, but as things have been recently regretably I dont think we are losing too much. Good luck in the Midlands Saff!

Well we`ve got Russel back, not a bad signing in my view and gives more options in mid field. I think he has improved since leaving Norwich and should now be at his best. I think he again is the sort of player who will want to play for us, this is a good philosophy by Grant, we`ve had too many lately who dont look as if they can be bothered! The team that went up was full of guys that wanted to play for us and created a great team spirit, lets hope we can recreate this.Russell, Chadwick and Le Judge sounds like a pretty handy combination to me. One thing Darryl, please dont start wearing those stupid gloves again!  We still need a defence however, hopefully there is still more to come, well done Grfanty, keep going!!

So are we all expecting  to hear something tomorrow about signing a centre half or do we just wait and hope?

[quote user="ryan85k"] He looks set to sign a one year deal with Ajax, what are your thoughts? Underachiever? Over-rated? Unsuited to the English game? I remember seeing him in his home debut against Inter Milan where he had an immense debut, what went wrong? He looked to have the ability to overlap and attack teams yet always stayed back.... maybe he was told to do this? [/quote] To lose this guy is total sh.t. I can tell you all with some authority that he is the fastest player in the City sqad. Yes, on the sprint tests that the players do he wins. He has great potential going forward which has never really been used. I have been a Grant supporter but he does not realise what he has got with this guy and this shows a lack of judgement on his part. To play Hughes in place of Colin is a total joke. We cannot afford to lose people like this, for me this is the first glimpse of Peter Grant not knowing what he is doing! THIS IS A TOP CLASS PLAYER. AJAX HAVE SPENT TIME LOOKING AT HIM AND CAN SEE WHAT WE IGNORED. WE HAVE LOST ERNIE ON THE CHEAP, DONT LET  JUGEN GO AS WELL.....PG  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?????????????

I sit in the City stand where it joins the snake pit. Will we see the flag on Tuesday night??? Hope so!

We dont seem to be hearing much coming out of Carrow Road about the need for further additions to the squad. A few weeks ago Grant was talking this up but since the pre-season friendlies have got underway it`s all gone quiet. We are getting a lot about "hard work"and "lots of positives", despite 2 defeats, but nothing on a new defender which everyone is agreed we need. I havn`t seen any of the games yet but will be at the West Ham game,  from what I read our defence is just as poor as it was last season.  Come on Granty and lets see some action!