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Tumbleweed

Inexperience or incompetence?

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I don''t care whether Bennett''s wife was or was not having twins. I don''t blame Bassong for being out of position at times, almost conceding a pen or causing panic every time he looks to do his shuffle when clearing a ball. I don''t blame Pinto for having a tough game defensively in his first match for us. Nor I don''t particularly get upset that it was Russell Martin''s backpass which of itself almost handed the game to Liverpool.

What I do find astonishing is that Alex Neil is still playing Bassong and Martin at CB. 27K fans week in week out pretty much can see they are not good enough, tens if not hundreds of thousands of Canary exiles get the same feeling. Chris Sutton is highlighting the folly of perpetual tinkering and changing.

Even Michael Owen, a man with the analytical powers of a pot plant, can see it.

So why can''t Alex Neil? Why are we still in this ludicrous situation where he is either (a) too stubborn to see it for what it is or (b) failing for 12 months now to fully address it.

So as partial vindication for young Alex we have a new £7m man on the bench. If he''s not ready he shouldn''t be on the bench. So he must have been ready. Yet he didn''t come on. At all. Even when Milner sliced through our soft centre and the clear signs were there already that the stubborn persistence was again failing.

Then we come to the line up. Staggering. Playing two attacking midfielders as defensive cover, Wes and an out of form Redmond in the line up with a debutant attacking right back and a left midfielder at right back. Brave? No, I would argue it was stupid, a defensive car crash waiting to happen.

Now Alex Neil has earned a lot of brownie points for doing what he did last season. But at some point one has to question whether the "inexperience" card is being played as a convenient excuse to hide the unpalatable thought that maybe, just maybe, he isn''t quite the new messiah we all thought he was. That the Premier League, just as it was for Chris Hughton, is just a step beyond his capability.

Winning the play off final was remarkable. But it doesn''t immunise him from criticism forever. To me, the biggest non-performance on Saturday was from Alex Neil himself. He can blame individual mistakes all he likes but he made the biggest one of all and that is persisting with a broken and discredited defence and slapping on top a ludicrously inappropriate midfield.

So just where does inexperience end and stupidity begin?

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Posted similar on another thread. Cannot keep excusing everything on the basis of experience. He''s over thinking things and based on his explanation of why he did it I would say it was poor judgement not anything to do with experience.

He''s still hugely in credit but lack of experience cannot continue to be used as an excuse every week. We''ve had enough games this season for him to have learnt who is up to the job and in what positions.

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I agree also about the midfield. If you are going to play a CB pairing you know has weaknesses then surely you also give them as much protection as you can. Naismith, Wes and Redmond was one attacking midfielder to many. Mulumbu should have played and been given the Tettey role for the day. Closest thing we have to a like for like replacement.

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Be careful what you wish for. Our club could be thrown into turmoil if a small minority force yet another important person to our club out.

Lambert was a good fit here - since, he became close to the worst manager in Villa''s history and is now struggling after an initial feel good at Blackburn.

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A bit of both regarding this game.I can only assume that in training the players look better than they are and that''s why they get picked.To pick Bassong & Martin as the CB pairing and try and give a valid reason with Klose on the bench, please never again.It''s time to hand over the captains armband to either Naismith or Howson.

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But we did lose Nutty and doing that too often gets us relegated. Nobody is going to excuse relegation on the basis that we scored lots of goals.

The defensive formation on Saturday proved to be a disaster especially as the mid-field offered little protection. It is interesting that in all the newsprint reports of the game that I have seen Martin received the lowest player rating. He has been an excellent servant to the club and I see him having a coaching role in due course but he should never be played at CB again.

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It was a valid reason to keep Klose on the bench. He''d barely played for Wolfsburg and had only been in Norwich for a couple of days. At least Pinto had had a couple of training sessions with his new colleagues.

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I''m a big Alex Neil fan and certainly strongly disagree with any calls for him to be sacked - however, I was really underwhelmed with his post match analysis which basically boiled down to ''players making poor decisions''. Obviously that''s true but it doesn''t exactly inspire confidence that he knows what he needs to do to sort it out.

I thought Naismith''s post-march interview was more insightful when he talked about a lack of communication, lack of ''talking'' on the pitch and that the whole team should have defended better.

It''s clear we need a captain on the pitch who''s prepared to talk the talk and isn''t frightened to speak up. You''d have to figure that Naismith could be that man.

All that said, I have a lot of sympathy for AN. He single handedly dragged the club into the PL and then wasn''t given adequate provision to bolster his defence which we were crying out for. And I''m not excusing him for not picking a more defensively equipped midfield. It reminded me of when we went without Tetley for the last 20 mins against Newcastle.

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"It was a valid reason to keep Klose on the bench. He''d barely played for

Wolfsburg and had only been in Norwich for a couple of days. At least

Pinto had had a couple of training sessions with his new colleagues."Why use up a position on the bench if there was no intention on playing him.

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This is getting tiresome....

Yes, the manager picked the team but by my reckoning we have Russ, Bassong, Bennett, Klose and Gafaiti as recognised centre backs and Wisdom who can play there as well, without Bennett or Wisdom being available. So, the manager had to chose whether to play Gafaiti who is not up to PL standard, Klose who met his teammates 4 days previously and hasn''t played a game for weeks or Russ who is almost PL quality. As to having an unprepared Klose on the bench, what other option did he have? Not have a Central Defender on the bench in case of injury?

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Yes we did lose Crafty. And losing gets you relegated. However we also lost 3-0 at Bournemouth last week. It seems we are a little closer to winning the more "inexperienced or incompetent" the manager is....

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[quote user="cornish sam"]This is getting tiresome....

Yes, the manager picked the team but by my reckoning we have Russ, Bassong, Bennett, Klose and Gafaiti as recognised centre backs and Wisdom who can play there as well, without Bennett or Wisdom being available. So, the manager had to chose whether to play Gafaiti who is not up to PL standard, Klose who met his teammates 4 days previously and hasn''t played a game for weeks or Russ who is almost PL quality. As to having an unprepared Klose on the bench, what other option did he have? Not have a Central Defender on the bench in case of injury?[/quote]

For the umpteenth time, Bennett was available. he was just dropped.

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As has been mentioned on numerous other threads Sam, Bennet was available but Martin was picked as he was deemed better suited to handle Firmino, who was likely to start over Benteke. That particular gamble didn''t pay off.

 

But you only need to look at how pi$$ed off AN was post match to recognise his disappointment that the half time plans were not adhered to, for whatever reason, leading to that crazy last 25 minutes. No obvious holding midfielder available, who was he supposed to play there? What''s happened to Mulumbu - he was only signed in the summer and was seen as an upgrade on Tettey; odd.

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[quote user="dibbler"]"It was a valid reason to keep Klose on the bench. He''d barely played for

Wolfsburg and had only been in Norwich for a couple of days. At least

Pinto had had a couple of training sessions with his new colleagues."Why use up a position on the bench if there was no intention on playing him.[/quote]Probably because we needed someone on the bench, a central defender, purely as back-up. He wouldn''t have played unless a serious inury to one of the others.

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AN played Bassong and Martin because they were the best option he had. It was not the right game to throw Klose straight into after 2 training sessions. Yes he cost 7M but you''d be the first person on here saying he was rubbish and that we lack ambition etc etc if he''d played and we''d also shipped 5 goals.

Clearly we need to overhaul the defence and that is happening. Ok not as quickly as we''d like but it''s not through want of trying. We can''t force player to come here, even if we''re prepared to pay the money!

I don''t get why everyone is so up in arms about this result. We scored 4 goals past Liverpool. When did that last happen? Naismith looked fantastic and he made the players around him play better. That was Redmond''s best game for a long time. We missed Tetty and who knows what the issue is with Mulumbu.

Last time we went down we couldn''t score goals. That''s not the case this time round. AN will sort out the defence by the end of January. It''s also interesting what Naismith said about communication and IMO that''s where we missed GON. Silly boy for getting that red card.

Keep your pants dry and perhaps we''ll get a point against spurs.

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[quote user="alartz"]Summed up perfectly. Agree 100%

Now get someone in who knows what they''re doing in this league.[/quote]Oh yes, that reminds me.Who should we get in to replace ''useless c**t'' Alex Neil, alartz? As far as I''m aware, you never enlightened us with your shortlist of managers who would be able to come in and guarantee us the points we need to survive, while simultaneously building for a long-term future.Cue awkward silence...

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I am fast coming to the conclusion that Neil is a numpty. It is clear we have been sold a puppy by Hamilton.

Neil out. Lambert back and soon as you like please

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It''s not enough for Neil post match to just shrug his shoulders and  say "we were fine for 65 mins....I don''t know what happened after that".

Its his job to know what happened and to sense danger and react to it , in game.

As bad as his initial team selection was his failure to react to our losing the midfield when Liverpool got in backto 3-2.....to stand and allow them to sythe through our midfield 3 times without doing nothing to stem it was a failure on his part.

I can forgive him their 5th, as the blame firmly lays with our players in their inability to get goal side and throw bodies in front of the ball.

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It''s bad enough Waveney''s many aliases popping up to deliberately disagree with other posters, but now it appears he is arguing with himself.Can we put a stop to this madness, please? Waveney, you''ve joined in with the PUPs thread and even been to meet people at the Nelson, is it too much to ask that you just keep to the one username forthwith?

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Sorry Fuzzar, I missed that , if AN is being totally honest with us then fair enough, I can appreciate his thinking but we were always going to leak goals with that back line, I thought his hand was forced. I''m not on Twitter or anything like that so have no knowledge about Mrs Bennett and her health or progress with dropping the sprog(s) but if it''s imminent then it might have been a slightly political answer even if it was a tactical decision...

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It seems that we''re at an interesting point with both manager and club. At some point within the next 1-2 years we''ll have a better idea how good both are, simply because there will be fewer excuses in the event of things going wrong.But at the end of the day the buck stops with those running the club, not with the manager.

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Your logic lets you down Nutty. We lost by 4 goals at Newcastle, then by 3 goals at Bournemouth and now by 1 goal to Liverpool. This would suggest that the more experienced rather than inexperienced the manager becomes the closer we come to winning.

Of course the results better reflect the tactics employed and the performance of players on the day rather than the relative experience of the manager.

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Never mind a match-to-match improvement, it''s an improvement on our recent 3 season PL stay that a lot of fans will want to see. If they don''t see it I think they''ll be more likely to blame the board than the manager. There''s been a hint of this already with the board instead of manager being blamed for the lack of business done in the summer.

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Indeed Crafty but where your logic let''s you down is not recognising that football is a team game and the changes made between Bournemouth and Liverpool improved the team performance many fold. To suggest the changes had a detrimental effect don''t bear scrutiny with any logic I am aware of.

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