Yorkshire Canary

Today we lost away to a very good side. For us to gets points off top third clubs the opposition need to have an off day, we need to play 100% and get the rub of the green. I have been watching this club for decades and anyone who did not think we would struggle big time this season needs a reality check. A few weeks ago we were dead and buried and looking over our shoulder at Derbys all time low points tally in the top flight. Regardless of who is in charge of the team they cannot get a pint out of a half pint pot. We are alas with odd exceptions a championship squad all over the pitch, with as others have said about 4 players that may get a game at another top flight club. Its not Idahs fault that someone thought it a good idea to make him our back up striker when the lad has hardly ever scored a competitive goal. Its not Sergeants fault not to score a hatful when he only got about 6 last season in a relegated side. Farke contributed to his own downfall at the top level with his tactics but its the poor recruitment that has and will do for us this season. we know we have spent more than in the past, but therein lays the danger, we have gambled on youth and potential , and bargain prices overseas and at this level it looks as if right now we would struggle to get our money back. We are where we are, yes its disappointing, but no its not a surprise. Physically we always look small against PL teams a lesson still not learned. I suspect we will have many more disappointing days but also some good ones, statistically the bottom 3 clubs need about another 24 points each to stay up, and whilst one may do it, i dont think the end of season table at the bottom will look much different to what it does now. My point is as well we have been easily beaten today by a good side, but we had chances, but we often do but take too few of them, the Newcastle and Wolves games underlining the problem, Pukki scores or no one does. I am sure we will beat one good team we often do and may yet make a fight of it and get some good results but managers do not have magic powers they can only do so much with what they have. If we do go down i suspect we will still be a strong championship side, but then the cycle of past years will no doubt repeat itself in the absence of some stunning transfer bargains or financial investment in the club

My initial thoughts were quite negative, though on reflection i have become much more positive. He has shown he can win games in the PL which alas Farke did all too rarely. He has also had a grounding at lower league level which i think is important and had success in the championship. Farke was a top championship manager but way out of his depth in the top flight. If we had kept him the relegation was a certainty imo now it is still probable but perhaps with a **** of hope, but time will tell

We are all in this together but come at it from different perspectives. regardless what happens in the wider world we most do our best to make individual risk assessments, but lady luck will play a very big part as so much of this is outside our individual control. There is though a lot of misinformation which in turn influences behavior and attitudes. The view that the only people who will die or get really ill from this virus are the really old, really ill or unvaccinated is partly true, but in the main false. For a number of months now the vast majority of COVID deaths in the UK have been doubly vaccinated people. Doubly vaccinated both catch it and transmit it. The vaccine is a wonderful thing but is only 1 tool in the box and people need to live their lives yes but not throw caution to the wind in the misguided view that only a few on the fringe will be adversely affected. Masks do help fact, part of the menu, so does social distancing, both of these in recent months seem in large part to have gone out of the window. The number of infections recorded is important as roughly 0.4% will ultimately die several weeks later. 20% of all people in hospital are under 30. Great though it is the vaccine is only effective on at best about 90% of people like most vaccines so hand on heart does anyone on here know if they are in the 90% or 10 %. Many have underlying conditions, many people have them and do not even know they have. When all this kicked off we were slow to learn the lessons of Spain and Italy, lets not be slow to learn the lessons of Israel one of the most vaccinated countries in the world who threw caution to the wind in May and opened up dropping all restrictions a couple of months or so ahead of us and now are reintroducing many restrictions after a high spike in Delta cases which are more transmissible, no big events for them at the moment. They are already dishing out 3rd jabs which are being effective but we are still talking about it. Yes i love football and other big events, do i think in their current format they are sustainable ? not for a while. I totally accept what others say that this virus will not go away and we need to learn to live with it, but there are a lot of twists and turns along the way, our numbers are going up and the schools and universities have not gone back yet.Throw into the pot the pot that we do not fully understand how long the vaccines will be effective for is another complication, early research suggests that Pfizer is better in the short term but its protection wanes at a much faster rate than Astra Zenica. There are no easy answers to this. What makes this issue very different is if i catch it i can give it to others even people i do not know, if i like to drink, smoke, take drugs have an unhealthy lifestyle etc then in the main it is me who picks up the tab

True but double vaccination does not prevent you catching it or passing it on, it does stop you getting ill or worse, time will tell of course but i suspect there will have to be a rethink to some extent on large events, possibly reduced capacity. What we would like to happen and what may happen are two separate things

It is being reported tonight on BBC and Sky News that 4500 COVID cases are thought to be linked to a music festival in Cornwall attended by 50 000 people. If this proves to be the case then despite the desire of so many to return to an element of normality then in the short term at least there may have to be a re think on big spectator events. The concept of COVID passes touted as a possibility for October would seem tobe a red herring to me.The vaccine is wonderful at reducing the chances of death and serious injury but has little or no impact on being able to both catch it and pass it on. This being the case what is the point of restricting entry to any event to double vaccinated people, for what purpose. By all means everyone should be encouraged to get vaccinated for their own wellbeing but it no longer seems to help others. Will this have an impact on football and other big events, quite possibly. It is interesting to note that Israel the most vaccinated country in the world is re imposing restrictions after a surge in infections

Whilst the early signs are not good the last 2 fixtures will not define our PL season it will be the hoste of 6 pointer games against mid table down wards. On an individual note do i expect us to do much better than our last two PL seasons ?, i hope so but my prediction of being in and around the bottom 3 will not be far wide of the mark. That said there is a lot of difference battling it out for the last relegation slot as opposed to being cut adrift again. Lets look forward to a better reaction against Leicester,

Pondered on it but taken up the option to defer, makes a ticket free for a younger fan to go this season .Too much uncertainty at the moment for me. I am double jabbed but a friend up North lost her best friend the other week mid 60s who was also double jabbed who caught it watching the Euros in the pub. It isnt the game time that concerns me its the getting in/out and HT that is always rammed. The vaccine is brilliant but you can still catch it and pass it on, it stops serious illness for 90% who knows if you are the lucky 9/10. Rates in Norwich are some of the highest in the country at the moment, ONS today say 1 in 75 have it so on a typical matchday between 200 and 300 in the ground will have COVID which makes some of us oldies think

84 points we probably have enough for second spot already. This season 90 points will be way above 3rd slot so 2 wins for me, who will finish top it largley depends on the outcome of our game with watford which could go any way on the day

We now have 82 points with 9 games to go. Last season Brentford who finished 3rd only got 81. No complacency i know but we really are very nearly there a couple more wins and we can just concentrate on finishing top

We cannot yet count our chickens but we are really knocking on the door now. Tuesdays results for us were excellent to only have 1 of the 3 chasing pack win was fantastic. Swansea have just been scraping points with late late penalties of late and i am not surprised that they got a good thumping last night. It has also damaged their GD which was the worst of the lot. Now we are not only 10 points ahead with the same games but 10 better GD. To me it looks Norwich and Watford top 2 and i wouldn't bet against Bournmouth or Barnsley in the play offs

Don't get me wrong i think he is fantastic and i accept he was in a struggling side but 1 goal and 7 assists in isolation are nothing to rant about, goals wise well behind Cantwell that season. That is in stark contrast to this season with double figures in both goals and assists . I really do believe he will kick on but his true monetary value will not be reached until he improves on that in the PL. If he can get anywhere near his championship figures then we have a fantastic chance of staying up and kicking on

He makes us tick BUT he needs to show he can do it in the PL. If he can start to reproduce his championship form which he did not in the PL last time then he will go far and good luck to him. He can display his talents with us in the PL next season and we can take it from there, if he can do what we all think he is capable of doing and stays fit we have a decent chance of making a better fist of staying up

I wish him all the very best but his time here is done

Wonderful signing and he was just as potent during the first half of the PL season then he hit a brick wall. We need to learn from that not flog him to death and have other different striking options to compliment him and back up when tired/injured

It will be incredibly tight hopefully home advantage even with out fans will give us the edge. I do not expect us to keep a clean sheet and we do have quite a nice buffer but we all know that can change quickly. 90 points is normally good enough for second place and i think it will be this season so we need 20pts from 13 games, if we cannot get that many we do not deserve to go up. This game may be more about who finishes top rather than who goes up. I would actually take a draw given that we have a better run in than a lot of the other top 6 and it really does not matter where you get the points just so long as you get them. Prediction 2-2

If we get 3 points against a very resilient and in form Rotherham then i will be very pleased. This is a potential banana skin fixture and i would take a 1-0, though we may need to score more than 1 as Rotherham have shown an ability to score

Rotherhams recent form is very much better than their league position suggests and if we are not 100% then they are easily capable of taking points off us. To be honest unless we have injuries or someone desperately needs a rest then i would play my best side. I can see the argument about including Sorenson, though Mc Clean has done nothing wrong and its only when he is not playing that you notice what he gives. Is Hugill fit there was some suggestion he may be in which case i would like to see him with Pukki against a physical Rotherham outfit rather than Dowell or Vrancic. The latter has disappointed whilst the former has offered very little indeed when he has played.

We love our club but we have to be realistic without significant outside investment our glass ceiling is being a top championship club, getting promoted every now and again and having short stays in the PL. If we have a successful manager they will be pinched like Lambert was and the same goes for the players. We have a lot of players at this club that will need to be moved on even if we are in the championship let alone the PL. We have a hard core of 3 or 4 players that can justly count themselves as being PL quality. No younger players have broken through unfortunately this season in sharp contrast to 2 to 3 seasons ago when Maddison, Lewis, Godfrey, Aarons ,Buendia and Cantwell arrived on the scene, which is both a worry and disappointment. Of the more mature players Krul is still at the top of his game so is Gibson and Hanley, but then we are pretty thin on the ground, Vrancic, Steipermann, Hernandez and Tettey are way past their best, Pukki is still good but past his best, Hugill looks a decent championship striker, Dowell just looks off the pace as does Platecha

To me its all about if we go up or not. He may be a local lad but he will have his career aspirations which probably are a lot higher than a club like Norwich can offer. With a year left after this season if we are still in the championship and he does not sign an extension then he has all the aces and we need to sell as soon as we can for as much that we can get in the summer. If we go up then we can offer him a lucrative contract with no doubt a sell on figure included. This would suit all parties, he has a decent wedge guaranteed, he could show his talents in the PL and probably invite a bid from a bigger and richer club that would satisfy the management here. In many ways we are a similar size club to Leicester but without that financial investment we have a glass ceiling of getting promoted and relegated again on a regular basis. Leicester can offer top half PL football and without that top young players will not want to hang around here too long

Well Skipp is a great prospect imo and regardless of which Division we are in if Spurs do not want him then i would bite their hands off assuming we could afford him

Could do a lot worse regardless of which division we are in and it looks that Spurs are fully intending having Skipp in their first team squad next season which the lad full deserves and a very good advert for the loans policy whereby both clubs and player benefit

Great watching the lads play some great stuff against a pretty robust Stoke side who many pundits thought we may drop points against. It really underlines the importance to us of Buendia, made one, scored one and won the penalty and no coincidence that we dropped 7 points in 3 fixtures in which he played a total of about 60 minutes. No player is irreplaceable i know but he is as close to being one for us. Then to smash it all and fully expecting Brentford to smash a Barnsley side without a win in 2021 then that happens with old boy Carlton Morris getting on the scoresheet. Many twists and turns to come but nice to have that post game buzz return again this weekend albeit i know we did our best to give Stoke a couple of goals, we need to learn from those errors pretty quickly, it did not hurt us this time it could on another day

We have been a good Championship side for the past decade with brief appearances in the PL. The squad of 10 years ago looks easily as good as the one we have today

This lad looks the real deal. credit to Brentford time and time again they sell players for very good money and then make very astute purchases. This lad scored heavily in league 1 and Brentford took a punt on him we could have done so too, If he stays fit he will power them to the PL and possibly keep them there. I bet Newcastle are kicking themselves they sold him for £600000 to Peterborough

This is a strange one. I like him he has done very well but his games have been out of position at LB. It does not automatically mean he would be far better in his more natural midfield position. He may be but we have not seen him i rate Skipp too but it may be worth giving him the odd rest and trying Sorensonn