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Petriix

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Posts posted by Petriix

  1. Posted

    [quote user="Gingerpele"]Love in for Johnson?

    No one likes him, apart from me.

    Apparently ''stats'' say he doesn''t tackle much, but I actually watch the games, and i''m fairly certain he does. But many people seem to ignore that. And he isn''t that bad a passer. I bet everyone ignored his long range cross field pass straight to Snodgrass'' feet. And have ignored his improving shooting. Try actually watching Bradley Johnson all game, rather than just tuning in on the occasional poor pass.[/quote]I''m afraid I have to disagree with you about BJ, I do watch him consistently - particularly at home games which I go to. I actually think David Fox tackles more and is equally effective at mopping up in that defensive midfield role. People seem to think that DF is lightweight but I think that is an area of his game he improved a lot last season.BJ''s passing has improved and I did note a couple of nice balls he played into the channels against Liverpool but these were the exception. My concern is more with his shooting and him deciding to shoot where a better pass is on. The only goal of his I remember took a massive deflection and wrong-footed the keeper, otherwise the vast majority of his efforts are well off target yet he still insists on trying his luck - even taking 20yd freekicks ahead of someone like Pilks or E Bennett.By love-in I am more refering to how Hughton feels about him than the fans. It alarms me that he starts every game when we have other options which, in my opinion, are much better for the team.

  2. Posted

    We are seriously missing him. How can we afford to leave out Europe''s most accurate crosser?

    http://www.whoscored.com/Blog/3wvm115-mkyc9yxf4zzspg/Show

    I''m sick of this love-in with Bradley Johnson, he offers no creativity or vision which we are severely lacking. The flat 442 has blunted our midfield and the persistence with playing Howson deep and Snodgrass as a right winger leaves us with no quality balls into the box.

    It''s like Hughton watched all our games from last season and thout "hmm, let''s see how well we do without playing this entertaining, attacking football..."

    Bring back David Fox and the diamond!

  7. Posted

    Well, I think it''s interesting and in the same way that football cannot be separated from money, politics is not entirely unrelated to the game.Whilst it is natural for the high earners of premier league to be biased towards centre-right/conservative (pay less tax) ideology, I was dissappointed when Grant Holt ''came out'' as a tory in twitter because it removed the thin vaneer of hope that our footballing hero might be ''one-of-us'' or even give a to$$ about the community that hold (or held) him in such high regard.I''m not sure whether or not you have to be a socialist to play on the left wing but maybe that explains why England have found it so hard to fill the position, and don''t get me started on ''strikers''! 

  15. Posted

    [quote user="Blurboy1980"]Never get why people say Arsenal away would be good? why so we have more of a chance of losing? Anything at home would be nice and weaker of a team would be even nicer. I will take a easy ride to the final if possible and as many home games as possible. I wanna see Norwich back at Wembley one time in my lifetime and I live in Florida and I will fly over in a heartbeat.[/quote]...because gate receipts are split 50/50 in the FA cup and that alone could net us about £1m and it might be on TV which would be another chunk of cash. I agree though, I nice home game against Middlesbrough in the quarters first - assuming we beat Leicester!

  16. Posted

    [quote user="norfolkbroadslim"]I am amazed at the number of people who think West Brom will go down.  They are 7 points above the relegation zone and have won the same number of games as us?[:^)][/quote]It''s just a wild stab in the dark but it is probable that one of the mid-table teams will slip into trouble at some point so why not them?

  17. Posted

    I don''t see why things should change. The majority of clubs outside the top 6 are trying to reduce expendature so I can see wages throughout the PL gradually reducing. There will be new up-and-coming players from the lower leagues every year and we might start to bring one or two through the new youth setup. I would hate to see us break the current sallary cap as it is so much of what the club stands for.

  18. Posted

    When it comes to this sort of question I always look at the projected points table on Football365.It''s interesting to take an average between the season form and the recent form to get a better estimate of final points:

    Team Position Points Projected Points Projected Position
    Manchester City 1 54 89 1
    Manchester United 2 51 87 2
    Tottenham Hotspur 3 46 76 3
    Chelsea 4 41 68 4
    Liverpool 7 35 59 5
    Arsenal 5 36 58 6
    Newcastle United 6 36 58 7
    Sunderland 10 27 53 8
    Stoke City 8 30 52 9
    Norwich City 9 29 52 10
    Aston Villa 11 27 47 11
    Swansea City 13 26 47 12
    Fulham 12 26 45 13
    Everton 14 26 44 14
    West Bromwich Albion 15 25 43 15
    Bolton Wanderers 17 19 35 16
    Blackburn Rovers 18 18 32 17
    Queens Park Rangers 16 20 31 18
    Wolverhampton Wndrs 19 18 28 19
    Wigan Athletic 20 15 25 20
    From the above table you can see that that the league is split into 5 groups of teams: the top 7 - who are certainly safe; the upper mid-table of Sunderland, Stoke and Norwich - who are projected to finish on 50+ points; the lower mid-table of 5 teams projected to end on 43-47 points; the relegation scrap between Bolton, Blackburn and QPR - projected to reach only 31-35 points; and the bottom 2 of Wolves and Wigan - who, let''s face it, are all but doomed.Now, if it was as simple as this then we may as well end the season now, but that would be no fun would it?It doesn''t happen every year that the bottom 5 clubs are so far adrift of the mid-table but it is usual for one or two of the teams who are struggling to go on a fantastic run and end up comfortably safe. It is also common that one or two teams who appeared safe in the mid-table go on a terrible run and end up getting sucked into the relegation fight. The only thing we can do is try to make an educated guess as to who this might happen to.With 16 games still to play, most

    teams still have a similar balance of tough and easy(easier) fixtures.

    Even QPR have 3 or 4 they could easily win out of their last 10 so I tend to ignore who might have the harder runin at this stage although a tough last few games can compound a bad run of form. There are, however, some interesting factors to be considered...Norwich and Swansea are operating on a significantly lower wage budget than the rest of the clubs in the league. This arguably suggests that they have lower quality or unproven individual players and that they might have difficulty bringing in new players who could turn things around should they get into trouble. This implies that both these teams are currently overachieving and are, therefore candidates to suddenly start losing (think the coyote from roadrunner). Obviously we all know that we have a fantastic manager, unrivaled team spirit and work ethic and a number of our players are a lot better than their current wages and reputations allude to. At the start of the season I wrote Swansea off in the same way that the ill-informed wrote Norwich off and I stand corrected as I believe they are too good to go down.Of the other teams outside the bottom 5 West Brom, Everton and Fulham seem the most likely to get into trouble with maybe West Brom''s lack of firepower being slightly more alarming than Everton''s apparent lack of financial backing. Fulham always seem to be just out of trouble but they could finally run out of luck this year.The bottom 5 are all in some trouble but I don''t doubt that one or two of them will put a run together and finish higher up. In the same way that Norwich and Swansea are overachieving, Bolton and Blackburn are underachieving as they have good players and are established premier league teams. I have enjoyed watching the pantomime at Blackburn but they have been picking up points recently and looked a good team when they came to CR and I can see them escaping easily. I am not sure about Bolton but it would not surprise me if they survived comfortably.QPR are another amusing example of a team which arguably should be better than they are. There are a number of things which set the alarm bells ringing including the personalities and lack of cohesion as a team also influenced by an imbalanced wage structure, the small ground - hard for them to create a hostile atmosphere, dodgy off field recent history, new manager at a difficult time, new chairman who apparently gets too involved... In any case, they are down there now and trying to buy their way out of trouble. I can see them being another Portsmouth if they go down but they could just about scrape survival if things start to go their way.The bottom two seem unlikely to survive but stranger things have happened. Either side could scrape 17th if enough other teams perform badly enough. However, I am convinced that Wigan are as good as down. They stayed up by the skin of their teeth last year thanks to N''zogbia''s goals (6 in 5 games was it?) then they sold him and did not replace him with anywhere near the same quality. Not sure whether Wolves have it in them or not but it is a big hole to get out of.My prediction:18 WBA19 Wolves20 Wigan

  19. Posted

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-16689224I wonder what their wage bill is/was compared to ours. Did we make a similar loss after paying bonuses etc?I''ve got a feeling that we had one of the lowest wage bills in the Championship and I''m certain it''s the lowest in the PL. It would be interesting to know. If this is the case then it just goes to highlight what a fantastic job Lambert and the board are doing in constructing the current squad and getting such a high level of performance out of them.

  21. Posted

    I was interested to see how much the teams [which I expect

    to be] around us have spent this summer compared to us and what they have got

    for that money. I found this link which seems to have

    the most accurate information I could find.

    The main thing which leaps out at me is wages - we have not signed any players

    which would demand high wages and I sincerely doubt if anyone at the club is on

    over £20,000 a week. Would be interesting to know if anyone has any reliable

    info about the wages we are paying as this is a gut feeling and not fact. Other

    teams’ wages for 2009-10 can be found here. I would suspect that

    they are quite a bit higher now for a lot of clubs but similar as a proportion

    of turnover for many - especially those around us.

     

    It would be interesting to know how much Swansea are paying

    in wages - I suspect a bit more than us but not as much as the other lower PL

    teams. They are yet to score in the PL and I do not think they have bought in

    much real quality - a bit like us some might say. Maybe Wayne Routledge, Leroy

    Lita and Danny Graham will surprise us all but I fully expect Swansea to be

    propping up the table for much of the season and are sure to go down.

     

    Wolves and West Brom are two of the only other clubs in the

    PL who have a relatively low wage bill but I suspect that they are paying way

    more than we are. They have both added few players to their squads but the

    quality is arguably very high.

     

    Wolves have bolstered their defence and have started

    brightly in the league when I expected them to struggle. I will be amazed if

    they are out of relegation trouble all season but the signings of Roger Johnson

    and Jamie O''Hara look good and might help them to concede a few less this year

    which might make the difference.

     

    Shane Long is a class player - I would have loved us to buy

    him - and has already shown he can score in the PL and people on here were

    suggesting that Zoltan Gera could be a good signing for us if the wages weren’t

    too high. However, I do not think that they will be enough to keep West Brom

    from struggling this year and I expect them to go down.

     

    Wigan survived last year thanks to N’Zogbia’s goals in on

    the final day and preceding weeks but he has now gone and I doubt that the

    players they have brought in will fill the gap he has left. I think they will

    struggle as a result and will probably go down.

     

    QPR have been talked about a lot on her because of their big

    name signings and they certainly haven’t broken the bank in terms of transfer

    fees alone. However, I would imagine their wage bill will be at least double if

    not triple what ours is. They are taking a massive gamble. Even if they stay up

    they will find it hard to break even will be reliant on a rich benefactor to

    keep going. Add to that the potential issues with egos in the dressing room and

    Colin trying to manage it all and it looks like a recipe for disaster. I would

    much rather be in our shoes.

     

    Stoke are a real surprise package for me. I remember them

    playing ugly hoof-ball and grinding out points in a nasty brand of

    anti-football but they seem to be actually passing it around and playing well.

    Their European exploits could be an unwelcome distraction but Cameron Jerome,

    Peter Crouch and Wilson Palacios are quality signings and should help keep

    Stoke in mid-table.

     

    On to Norwich:  on

    paper our squad looks weak in that there is almost no premier league experience

    and no big-name signings have been made so it is understandable that outside

    observers are writing us off. However, we have two things massively in our

    favour: our team spirit and our manager. Because we haven’t got any big-name

    players and big earners we have genuine competition across the squad. Lambert

    has carefully put this squad together based upon attitude and personality as

    much as footballing ability and I honestly think that the competition and

    togetherness will elevate us above our rivals. Perhaps it is to do with attitude

    why Lambert has chosen to freeze out certain players?

     

    One more for the mix is Blackburn. They have made some

    potentially good signings - especially Scott Dann, but their manager does not

    seem to inspire confidence. They have some quality in their squad and I

    honestly don’t know how well they will do but they could easily struggle. I

    expect them to avoid the drop though.

     

    In conclusion, I predict a bottom three of Swansea,

    Wigan and West Brom; with Norwich, QPR, Wolves and Blackburn making up the next

    four places.

  24. Posted

    [quote user="Sir Ecat"]Oh how we struggle to drum up positives from a match against mediocre opposition who were more interested in berating the ref than putting on any real performance.

    If we had any real quality we would have brushed them away. Our front line will be feeding off set piece scraps all season.[/quote]Binner alert!
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