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Petriix

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Everything posted by Petriix

  1. I think he's been excellent every time he's played in defence and continually improving with yesterday's performance right up there. He's still prone to the odd moment of madness but he seems to have better natural instincts around the positing required from a defender in comparison to the defensive side of the midfield role. He's alway been fairly decent in the air and he is pretty solid (if not spectacular) at defending, but it's the passing and carrying the ball forwards that gives us something extra. The team always has a better balance with Kenny in the back line.
  2. Those stats are phenomenal. 1.13 goals per 90 minutes and 79% shot accuracy are head and shoulders above the next best player and 42% goal conversion is joint top. I definitely didn't rate him before this season. He's absolutely come good now.
  3. Deflected off the wall which took it right into the corner. Vrancic did have a habit of getting favourable deflections.
  4. I'm not totally convinced. I think McCallum was fouled in the box twice and there were a bunch of other fouls not given or obvious yellow cards that he kept in his pocket. The fact is that we were so good that it didn't matter but, on another day, might have made a difference.
  5. A huge part of the balance is Barnes dropping deeper and adding an extra body in midfield. In general we're doing far better at those tactical rotations meaning we're spending less time outnumber in the central third, finding some decent pockets of space and occasional overloads. It's noticeable how much better we are in transitions both when we win and lose the ball with some quick vertical passes in attack and reliable defensive cover in defence. This is all I've been asking for and addresses my fundamental problem with playing two strikers. I love McLean the centre back. He adds a whole extra dimension in the defensive line (and his ability to break from it). Teams really struggle to cope when he pushes into midfield because no one knows who should be picking him up and, invariably, whoever does then leaves someone else free. But, yes, I'm very happy with the Nunez/Sara partnership.
  6. Have you been to any home games this season? Believe it or not people do try to create an atmosphere but there's a real malaise over the place. It's very difficult to 'get behind the team' as an individual. All one can do is either join in with the crowd or not. Unfortunately on Tuesday that was a collective grumble. Today we'll wait and see, but the fans need something to be positive about before they can be positive. Wish me luck trying to start the "you do know what you're doing" chant in the river end.
  7. I think, by way of apology, we need to chant "you do know what you're doing" at some point today.
  8. No, he also has a degree of responsibility to represent the public face of the club. If he had any aspirations of long-term success here then he needed to build bridges, not burn them. I've seen managers turn on fans before and it never works out well. You have to accept the context: Dean Smith was sacked when we were 5th because it was thought that the club should be performing better - didn’t we have the highest wage bill in the Championship? Our prior campaign at this level was (statistically) the clubs best ever season. Wagner has ultimately taken the club into a sharp decline followed by an equivalent recovery to end up basically where he started; which was (and is) below where everyone thought the club should be. Cherry-picking the recent results then acting confused as to why there's still discontent is just silly. It's all about the context. Overall Wagner has underperformed. Pretending that fans' frustrations are just 'a vocal minority' of morons, mindlessly creating a negative atmosphere is ridiculous. Yes, some of them are idiots who boo successful passages of passing because they don't understand what they are watching. But many have genuine concerns about repeating patterns of poor play due to apparent tactical deficiencies. Proving people wrong on the pitch is brilliant. The most frustrating thing is that Wagner's system actually works well for increasing periods of games but is regularly undermined by some strange decisions. I want him to succeed. So do most people. But you can't ignore the overall context of just how far the quality of football has declined.
  9. Er, by not telling them to stay at home? Nobody is still claiming that his substitutions were wrong. He should just have accepted that people were unhappy in that moment and maybe said something at the end about hoping he'd proved a few people wrong.
  10. At the point of the game where the booing occurred the team were struggling to string two passes together and were in the process of letting a two goal lead slip. It's clear that Wagner doesn't have much 'credit in the bank' with many fans because of his overall record at the club and particularly the two long runs of bad form that left many thinking more about relegation than promotion. Yes, it came good. The tactical switch was correct. An excellent 60 minutes out of 90. More 'patterns of play' than 'moments of brilliance'. Everything people have been asking for. But that period in the middle was everything people have been (rightly) complaining about: huge holes in the midfield, isolated attackers, poor positioning, losing individual battles. Here's the crunch: the booing runs much deeper than a brief misunderstanding about an injured player. There's a deep frustration amongst fans because the club has effectively self-immolated from a period of playing the best brand of football seen in my time as a supporter to paying some staggeringly high wages to a very average, ageing squad playing questionable tactics. It isn't going to take much for things to boil over. The manager escalating things only serves to make matters worse. Boo indeed!
  11. Not at all. The substitutions were fairly typical of the sort of tactical decisions that Wagner regularly makes. Previously it was Rowe being subbed like clockwork on 60 minutes despite being our best attacking threat. It's entirely reasonable for people to have assumed it was more of the same, especially after the previous game. And, yes, Wagner absolutely is to blame for making such a faux pas because he's employed by the club in a professional capacity while the fans are the customers who ultimately pay his wages. Imagine how it would look if you came out and publicly slated your customers for giving your product a bad review. I'd have thought the primary purpose of your job is to deliver the best possible customer experience so as to maximise revenue; if people criticised your work because the end product was poor then it probably wouldn't go down too well if you published a video telling them that they should simply not buy your product. That's effectively what Wagner has done. Ultimately the fans don't have any responsibility, aren't accountable and don't have any real input to the way the club is managed. All they can do is provide immediate feedback on what they see on the pitch. People genuinely were trying to create an atmosphere but the game went totally flat because of the poor performance for a prolonged period. Given the context of the match, our previous defeat against Watford having been 2-0 up and the QPR draw it doesn't take much emotional intelligence to understand that the fans might have been frustrated. As a professional, Wagner should take it on the chin. Not because the fans were right, but because he's digging himself into a hole from which he's unlikely to be able to escape. Managers simply don't come back from this kind of outburst. That's on him. I can't see him surviving beyond the summer regardless of how the season ends. And that's a shame because he has actually done a half decent job of improving things since Webber left.
  12. I'm not really interested in the 'sides' thing. It's worthwhile trying to understand why people respond the way they do rather than just dismissing them as whingers or morons. Personally I don't think anyone is to blame when someone scores that kind of goal, but it's reasonable to say that the team were performing badly at that point, arguably due to systemic issues caused by the combination of players on the pitch and the roles they were performing. Now it's also clear that the same players then started performing better. Maybe you could attribute that to Wagner's tactical change. Great. I don't think you'll find a Norwich fan who is unhappy about that. But, just because people booed doesn't mean they can't enjoy the resurgence and ultimate victory. It's clear that no one in the stands knew that Sargent was injured and there was nothing to suggest he was until he went straight down the tunnel. People got the wrong end of the stick. On mass. It's understandable that they were frustrated at that point. It's more worrying that Wagner couldn't understand the frustration. The loss away at Watford sticks in the memory and it appeared to be repeating in front of our eyes. "Do something to get a grip on this game... No, FFS, don't take our best attacker off." He should get it. So should you.
  13. That kind of hyperbole isn't constructive. People have entirely reasonable concerns with some of Wagner's team selections and substitutions because they're able to clearly observe some systemic flaws repeatedly appear on the pitch as a result. On Tuesday we went from a coherent structure to a total shambles for a significant portion of the game. I actually think the booing and conceding the second goal galvanised the team into performing better. Ultimately I think it comes down to people not really understanding what Wagner is trying to do. If there was a clearer message about our 'style' then maybe it would be more obvious when a player was being withdrawn through injury. Wagner constantly takes off one of our better attacking players after an hour so it's understandable that people assumed it was tactical this time as well.
  14. I can't be the only one who thought Onel was having an absolute mare in the second half because Lewis had pushed forwards leaving Stacey with 2 on 1 and Hernandez was just hanging out on the halfway line marking no one. His substitution was tactical and correct. Taking Sargent off seemed strange to me because there was no indication of injury; if he'd gone down and required treatment or even limped on his way off the pitch then it would have avoided the whole debacle.
  15. We're not currently on target for the playoffs so I'd say our position is a fair reflection of the players and manager combined. Right now we're not quite good enough; if we do make it then we'll have to do better. If we do see a sufficient sustained run of form then I don't think anyone will still be complaining.
  16. Clearly he's decided to start with a slightly weakened team so that he can bring on some quality from the bench. Not a terrible idea.
  17. I'm relatively happy with the first 11, except that we're mostly playing two strikers (false 9s or otherwise) and there's no genuine 6 in the squad who can anchor the midfield. McLean, Sara and Nunez are all good 8/10s but don't have the defensive instincts I want to see. Yawn... We've been debating this forever. The real problem I have is that our only options from the bench (or in case of injury) in the AM role are Hernandez and Fassnacht. If we're pushing for the playoffs then I feel we need a bit more quality on the periphery of the first team. We're allowed 5 subs and, as things stand, they could each make the team worse; otherwise we're resorting to deliberately weakening the first 11 to leave some quality on the bench. I don't really know anymore. If the core team stays fit then we might be fine. Our run-in is relatively smooth. Ask me again in May.
  18. I think it's far more nuanced than you're making out @hogesar. I definitely wouldn't call Sara's position today a 'number 10', at least not the kind that I've been hoping for. For me, a number 10 operates in a fairly narrow, free role with the option of dropping deep or running beyond the attacking line. Think Wes Hoolahan in Lambert's diamond. As @Mason 47 says, Wagner has him playing as a second striker which is nothing like his best position. A number 10 would generally be much deeper but have licence to break forward in a way that an 8 can't because the latter has much more defensive responsibility. Played as a proper 10, Sara would be making those runs from deep and dropping into pockets of space to pick up the ball and playing those quarterback type passes.
  19. 5-2 is objectively a better result than 4-1 (for the losing side). That means we're better than Chelsea. Fact.
  20. The reason Wagner was looking so pissed off during the game was because the fourth official explained that he wasn't allowed to bring on another keeper without taking the first one off. He had hoped to play all three.
  21. Whatever. We've been absolutely fine for most of the game. Sure, there have been a few moments of chaos but we're trying to defend against one of the best attacking units around. This is far from embarrassing; unlike your comment.
  22. Sainz > Hernandez. Onel would be amazing if he could reliably do something with his last touch; without any end product the other touches are irrelevant. Sainz doesn't have anything like that physical presence (pace/power) but can find a teammate or the goal. If only we could merge them.
  23. Though I think he's had a good game, if anyone wants an example of why I don't like McLean as a defensive midfielder, that goal is it. He was perfectly positioned to defend that attack but just charged out, straight past the ball and left the hole for Liverpool to exploit. I know these are top players, but that's absolutely amateur positioning.
  24. I'm fed up with the unevidenced belief that Onel is 'effective'. I know he's got a couple of assists recently but those moments are very much the exception. He is strong, and fast. Enough to terrify defenders... until they realise that they don't actually need to tackle him because he loses the ball all by himself most of the time. Last night he came on before the 60th minute. He touched the ball 16 times, of which exactly 4 were completed passes. I don't really care what he does with the other touches because, if they don't lead to a successful, progressive pass, they weren't 'effective' at all. He's a great guy but he's never quite been good enough.
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