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Rudolph Hucker

Why are we so poor at home?

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For all his achievements Alex Neil has overseen three of our five home defeats.

He has one home draw to his name, when Ruddy threw the ball over his shoulder and into the net, compared to Neil Adams'' damaging five.

One of Alex''s home wins, against Cardiff, was almost lost for a draw and in not until we played Wolves did we look a competent balanced side.

Against Wigan and then Boro we threw away the opportunities to go top and capitalise on what is the very best away form in this league.

We are 7th best at home only, 8th in the last 6 home games and our defensive stats match that. Yes, we have been unlucky with the opposition''s chances to goals ratios and we have found inventive ways to give away goals but although Alex has turned those draws to wins we are still not much more than an average team at home.

We suffer when sides come here to defend and in the last two defeats gave sides who need the points easy early goals to have something to hang onto. Add naivety to the mix.

In some home games we have been embarrassed: Brentford, Reading and Boro until Bamford played on one leg. Eadie made the point on SKY that we hate strikers running in behind us.

But, it is worse than that because supporters are weary and soon become resigned. This has led to arguments between players and supporters of which Ruddy was the prime example.

It has seldom been like this, infact historically Norwich City thrive on home form and perform poorly away. It is as if the players improve away from the environs of Carrow Road.

For me, it all began with Hughton''s nauseating brand of football which certainly did for my season ticket. The lack of ambition in home games was demoralising and Brighton are seeing the same thing now.

But, after gung ho Adams football which included the big, big wins which may yet count for something with our goal difference and the admirable approach of Alex Neil we still have a home crowd quick to turn and players who do things at home they never seem to do away.

Why, why, why is our home form so consistently damaging under two different managers???

And why does this matter?

It matters because the play off home leg will be exactly the kind of game we have so often flunked and this is why there are so many comments about who various posters wouldn''t want to play and it is often because of the home game involved.

If we cannot get back to home comforts we have little chance of getting to Wembley.

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Luckily our away form is awesome. The obvious answer is that we''re the big fish and most of the teams that come here are happy with a point so just sit in. The teams that don''t win here are the ones who attack with the exception of Brentford. We find it hard to break down teams who make it hard to break them down. It''s got nothing to do with lack of ambition.

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i said on another thread that it is considered an advantage to finish 3rd or 4th in the league as you get to play the 2nd leg of the playoff semi at home........I actually think in our case I''d feel happier if the away leg was 2nd?

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Teams come away from home and keep it very tight against us.

To be fair to Neil he has only lost 3 home games. One against a decent Brentford side at the start of his tenure, one against Wigan which was your classic ''bizarre result of the season'' and one against a Boro side with 20 clean sheets and a Mourinho approach to going 1:0 up.

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Sorry I just don''t see your logic on this. These are not league games these are two legged cup ties effectively.

Teams will play no differently at Carrow Road if it''s a first leg tie, in fact they are more likely to go negatively with their home tie still to come.

What if they copy Wigan, Charlton and Boro''s negative tactics and come away with a 1-0 win in a FIRST leg played at Carrow Road? Do you honestly think they''re then going to open up against us back at their place knowing what our away form''s been like? No, of course not, they''ll play defensive again and see the tie out.

What you''re failing to realise is - the reason ''smash and grab'' has happened 3 times at Carrow Road this season and not away from home is because teams are expected to attack and entertain in front of their home crowd no matter who the opposition are. But with a slender lead in the second leg of a cup semi final this requirement will go out of the window faster than we go out of the FA Cup. Wembley will be the only thing that matters and our opponents will aim to achieve it at any cost.

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Our deficiencies are somewhat masked when we play teams which are up for a proper game, but brutally exposed when we run into a side like Boro. You get jeered at on here for speaking your mind and essentially saying we''re not good enough, but after a result like yesterday the trolls seem to back off or go into hiding. Bottom line - we need to improve on some of the basics before we go mouthing off about how good we are.

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[quote user="mrs miggins"]''quite poor in most games"

clearly talking $hit[/quote]But he''s right to a degree. We''ve often been less poor than other teams as opposed to being very good, see my post above.

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earlier in the season that would''ve been a good point tbd, but since AN has come in I personally don''t feel that''s the truth. We beat Bournemouth away with 10 men, We beat Wolves Watford Blackburn and the scum all in a row where the games we coming thick and fast. We had to win against Forrest at home and we did -3-1 convincingly. The disappointment was that we didn''t beat Derby when we should''ve due to the Ruddy error. There''s always gonna be games you lose against the teams down the bottom because they just sit in but since AN come in we haven''t been quite poor, in fact we''ve been really good and the form that we''ve shown since AN came in would''ve had us top. However, to be fair to you, the post did state that he was talking about the season as a whole.

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I think AN has been very good at maximising what he''s inherited and getting points on the board, but for me it remains to be seen if he''ll take us up a level. Despite our win record under AN there''s still plenty of scope to improve.I think there has been a euphoric reaction within the squad after being freed from the calamitous  influence of Adams. But the standard still needs to improve so that we can better deal with sides like Boro, as well as the better footballing sides like Brentford.

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[quote user="mrs miggins"]Luckily our away form is awesome. The obvious answer is that we''re the big fish and most of the teams that come here are happy with a point so just sit in. The teams that don''t win here are the ones who attack with the exception of Brentford. We find it hard to break down teams who make it hard to break them down. It''s got nothing to do with lack of ambition.[/quote]I think that''s right. The teams that have done well against us seem to sit very deep then catch us on the break. It''s as though they lull Norwich into a false sense of security.It annoyed me greatly that Wigan supposedly had a game plan, which is how they beat us. SHouldn''t Norwich''s game plan have countered Wigan''s inasmuch as Norwich''s players are essentially better than Wigan''s?As for Boro, they just seemed better than us for the first 15 minutes and then played an incredibly effective 10-0-0 for the rest of the match.

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No atmosphere at carrow road - too many sit in silence or look to moan at players at any opportunity - away from home it''s totally different- there''s been a brilliant atmosphere and loads of noise and encouragement from minute one to ninety.

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[quote user="93vintage"]Our deficiencies are somewhat masked when we play teams which are up for a proper game, but brutally exposed when we run into a side like Boro. You get jeered at on here for speaking your mind and essentially saying we''re not good enough, but after a result like yesterday the trolls seem to back off or go into hiding. Bottom line - we need to improve on some of the basics before we go mouthing off about how good we are.[/quote]You know exactly why you get ''jeered'' at.

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[quote user="Haggerdoo"]No atmosphere at carrow road - too many sit in silence or look to moan at players at any opportunity - away from home it''s totally different- there''s been a brilliant atmosphere and loads of noise and encouragement from minute one to ninety.[/quote]Did you go to the Boro game? The atmosphere was pretty good.

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If our away form matters in the playoffs we will have a lead to take into the home leg. That would prevent a Repeat of Wigan or Middlesbroughs spoiling tactics.

I would fancy Boro at Wembley, big pitch, and their lack of possession would allow us to put things right.

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[quote user="Herman "][quote user="93vintage"]Our deficiencies are somewhat masked when we play teams which are up for a proper game, but brutally exposed when we run into a side like Boro. You get jeered at on here for speaking your mind and essentially saying we''re not good enough, but after a result like yesterday the trolls seem to back off or go into hiding. Bottom line - we need to improve on some of the basics before we go mouthing off about how good we are.[/quote]You know exactly why you get ''jeered'' at.[/quote]But it is an interesting argument from 93vintage, Herman. It runs directly counter to the much-used mantra here, from such as Highland Canary and quite a few others, that we have uncontestably the best squad in the division and if only we had chosen an experienced manager (not necessarily a good manager, mind, but just someone who had done the job before) last May we would be comfortably top of the league.According to 93vintage that is not so. Even with someone now in charge who had done the job before and - as a bonus - seems to have a real talent for management seemingly maximising our abilities, we are just not that good.

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I think one of our problems is that we don''t have enough creativity and good enough delivery from the wings to break sides down. Hoolahan can be predictable and Redmond although he has improved, is still not always using his pace enough or putting in a good cross.

If you play against a side like Boro or a team playing as Wigan did, you need to stretch them by having some width and pace. If the attacks are too slow and methodical the opposition have too much time to get behind the ball.

Against Wigan I was very disappointed in Redmond''s contribution. He didn''t seem to have any confidence to take on the full back and use his pace, when we were crying out for a quick raids to break up the opposition and find gaps.

Sometimes you just have to do something the opposition is not expecting, be clever enough and sharp enough to break them down. Against Boro we just seemed to lack that crispness and creativity and Boro dealt well with everything we threw at them. We worked hard, but the quality was lacking in the final third.

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Our home record is generally ok with our defeats under neil being due to and injury crisis and new system failing in due to player indiscipline (Brentford) a freak (wigan) and great defensive performance (boro)

what we have struggled to do all season (back to charlton) is break down defences that are both packed and disciplined. On Friday our passing & movement was below par (eg BJ (who was not alone) found just 50% found a city player, olsson on byline putting crosses straight out) and we failed to get dribble or pass beyond the opponent enough. It is a story we have seen many times this season and is a limitation in the squad.

if we dont make auto promotion this season it will primarily down to poor home points tally, with too many soft goals (like fridays) and this inability to break down stubborn defences all season, not just fridays game.

What we can do is look at the play off and draw on teh fact that two of the three games are away - so absolutely we have nothing to fear

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agre swjf - width is important - and to be fair to redmond he did take on and put in decent crosses against boro showing what good width can do.

100% agree with movement of the ball, you stretch the game by pacy pacing rather than pacy players; I would have liked to see wes and hooper link up with redmond wide - we may yet see that at wembley

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Well, it took a while but after some defensive nonsense (which ignored the point I was asking an open question and backing it up with examples) there were some good points.

Surely, whichever manager was in charge, there can be no doubt we have got to where we are on away form and have failed to lead this league by several points because of home form historically poor by our own standards.

What I was really hoping for was some thoughts on the dynamic between fans and players. The away fans can always be heard giving admirable backing.

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RUDOLPH HUCKER wrote the following post at 18/04/2015 10:53 PM:

.................... when Ruddy threw the ball over his shoulder and into the net .........................

I started to read this post but when I saw the second sentence (part above) I am afraid all credibility was lost.

There have been many videos showing the obvious foul on John Ruddy which was missed by the officials at the time and by you despite the benefit of the opportunity of seeing the many videos.

If you can take such a biased and incorrect view of that incident why should I bother to read on?

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Someone is touchy.

It was a genuine question as the positioning of the commentary gantry and sound pick-ups give a misleading impression as to the volume of the away fans at Carrow Road.

There was certainly no lack of atmosphere, support or encouragement from the stands on Friday.

At times it''s been relevant to question aspects of the support for sure; the scapegoating of players and general boo first, engage brain later mentality that seemed to spread during the poor run before Xmas but I don''t think that it''s been that way for quite a while now. The reaction and encouragement shown to the players at the final whistle on Friday was enough to make the hairs on the back of the neck stand on end. A real "all in it together" reaction despite the obvious disappointment and plenty feeling a sense of some injustice due to the officiating and gamesmanship of the opposition.

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Why is home from so poor?   Well, actually its not that bad under AN. If you take the losses and draws under AN - Brentford - You could give allowance for the Brentford performance to a little bit of lack of knowledge of the players early on from AN, as he had only been in situ a short while.Middsbro - It was not a disgrace to lose to Middsbro - they did a job on us and the better team won on the day.   Derby - It was not a disgrace to draw with Derby - and their goal WAS the result of a foul on the goalkeeper.  Wigan - Poor, but after that Ipswich match, the intensity was not there and could have been a reaction to that great performance against the scum.

These are not excuses, but possible reasons why.   Only one extra win or draw would make the stats look a lot better.  As for performances and the crowd, the expectations are high at CR and the players are always going to feel that - but on the whole they have performed well.  Even against Boro the level of effort was there and they never gave up.   As for quality, AN is working with players he inherited and if we are promoted or not, next season will see us with the kind of players AN wants and his team and ethics will emerge even more than they have this season. 

In short there are plenty of reasons why we haven''t done quite so well at home as we would have liked and it is something that is bound to improve next season imo, as AN gets the players in he wants and stamps his identity right across the sqaud.

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