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Jim Smith

Neil's comments on Hoolahan

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Is it just me misinterpreting it or is Neil actually trying to claim credit for Wes''s performance against Derby by saying it was a result of him taking Wes out of the team recently?

Staggering arrogance. I can''t believe the players react well to reading him try and take credit for matters like this whilst blaming them every time there is a defeat.

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I don''t think I am. he is claiming credit for the way he has managed Wes recently and stating it is the reason he played so well against Derby.

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Wes went missing against Leeds, Derby and Brighton......gets dropped and comes back with a MOTM performance behind Nelson.

Sounds like AN is spot on.

You can twist anything if you''re that adamant on your dislike for someone!

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I love to see Wes playing against big strong physical teams because of his trickery and picking out killer passes.

AN don''t see him playing every game so we just have to enjoy his performances when he is out there.

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Wes has his faults, and has played poorly at times this season, I''m sure even he will admit that, but I do think not playing him during our poor run was a mistake. He''s a match-winning player. Funnily enough, we played him and we won.

Doesn''t make sense we suddenly need to "ration" Wes, when he was happily playing every game for club and country a few months ago...

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[quote user="Jim Smith"]I don''t think I am. he is claiming credit for the way he has managed Wes recently and stating it is the reason he played so well against Derby.[/quote]

Agree with Hogesar.  The manager is just explaining things as they are - as he always does.  Anyhow, there are enough people wanting to do him down without much cause, so if he occasionally points out things that are working well for him, I see no problem in that. Credit to Wes for his performance and credit to the manager for getting the best out of him, by rotating him and Pritchard in two close together consecutive matches.   All we need now is for Pritchard to raise his game a little and then we have dynamite in the team, whichever of them plays.

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He was poor though AJ, has been dropped and has come back better for it.

I agree I''d love to see an all firing Wes play 46 games this season and we wouldn''t be in this situation. But like every other player at some point he had to be dropped due to the awful run. Not making Wes the scapegoat as they all needed dropping in my opinion only it seems to have done him the world of good.

He''s our best player by a mile but that doesn''t make him invincible and he''s only little!

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Don''t agree he was poor against Leeds or that he was any worse than anyone else in those other games. I accept he needs the occasional game off (and we should have rotated him and Pritchard more) but we all know he was dropped as Neil was scrabbling around trying to find a side to buy him a win, quiet possibly costing us points from the games he missed, To try and make out that this was all part of some pre-planned managerial masterplan is irritating. he is again trying to take credit for all that is good whilst pass blame for everything that goes wrong.

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No player should be rationed unless coming back from injury and given those useful 15 minutes game time. As for Wes, he is one of our most creative players and needs to play more than not, even as an impact sub. He is rarely used as the latter which is a great shame ....some games have really called for him of late and we missed him badly in the latter part of our poor run. He can tire and at times looks off it but him and Pritchard should be playing ( one or the other or at times even both) every game.

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[quote user="Jim Smith"]Don''t agree he was poor against Leeds or that he was any worse than anyone else in those other games. I accept he needs the occasional game off (and we should have rotated him and Pritchard more) but we all know he was dropped as Neil was scrabbling around trying to find a side to buy him a win, quiet possibly costing us points from the games he missed, To try and make out that this was all part of some pre-planned managerial masterplan is irritating. he is again trying to take credit for all that is good whilst pass blame for everything that goes wrong.[/quote]AN said at right of the start of the season that Wes wouldn''t be playing all the games so again, he is just confirming he is doing what he said he would do.  As for him scrabbling around trying to find a team that would win.....what do you expect him to do, put the same players out each week and never finding a winning formula?   You really look as if you are just trying to find fault for the sake of it. I suspect AN has a sense of relief that the pressure valve was released a little bit by the Derby match and he is enjoying that - and why not, given the reaction he has been getting at matches recently.  If he irritates anyone for expressing that, tough. Give him a break - and some credit for being human.

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Is it any coincidence, but some of the players who performed well last season and subsequently played at the Euros certainly haven''t had the best of season so far. Not just Wes or Brady for us, but others also. Dimitri Payet at West Ham, Vardy at Leicester, Kane at Spurs who made a slow start also. We shouldnt all blame Alex Neil just because its easy to do so....

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The manager is managing the player to get the best out of him, can you not bear to give him credit for that Jim, and Highland?

Get this "Wes should be first on the teamsheet" nonsense out of your heads.

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[quote user="Jim Smith"]I don''t think I am. he is claiming credit for the way he has managed Wes recently and stating it is the reason he played so well against Derby.[/quote]Claiming credit? I''d say explaining how it is. Maybe he keeps getting asked why Wes doesn''t play every game; no shortage of people who repeatedly say he should.

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ENOUGH going on about the reaction AN has been getting at matches. He''s got off very lightly on what has been a very poor season so far.

He got support at the start of the season despite the team not playing well as winning was more important and we assumed performances would follow. We''ve since had a disastrous run that''s taken us from top to mid table whilst playing some boring football with a sprinkle of quality here and there....and the fans still haven''t completely turned.

AN has shown an incredible level of arrogance and disregard for the fans lately in my opinion and someone needs to have a word in his ear about speaking up for the fantastic support the team has gotten through the last few months. In this more ruthless era of foreign owners and investment, how many other clubs would have put up with the results let alone the performances this season?

His behaviour and comments are baffling. He''s acted like a little kid at times as though the whole worlds against him (witch hunt). Taken credit at stupid statistics (we won the 2nd half possession against Huddersfield) and emphasised more the fault of the players after a loss rather than himself or a collective failing.

Also LDC please answer my question from another thread.... You defend ANs behaviour during a match as heat of the moment, so why condemn the ''numpties'' as such when they voice their displeasure at a performance (or more pertinently, a managers decision?). If we as fans are spreading negativity although doing it out of passion, of which we have more for NCFC than AN does, surely AN is also spreading negativity and he''s supposedly much more important to the team than us.

Maybe if he took your advice (like we all should) and he just concentrated on supporting the team for the whole match and saved the negativity and critisism for the after the game, we''d be in a much better position than we are now...

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For me Wes has never scored enough goals for a No10

so yes Wes played a blinder against derby but if he is not creating for others becomes a bit of a passenger in games

i would of played Brady there this season

looks fantastic for Ireland through the middle

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Hi Zac

My thoughts as regards supporting are unchanged since I started going to CR in the late sixties. You go to show support, not to gang up on players or manager in the middle of a match. Individuals shouting abuse at players are an irritation every week, but when it gets to whole sections of the crowd chanting stuff or booing, then imo it has gone too far and people need to step back and think about it a bit more imo. Fans can be passionate and unhappy without resorting to direct challenges at the manager during a match. If people are really fed up with things, why not wait to the end of the match when any negativity isn''t going to affect the match itself?

I don''t really care who the manager is at any particular time - but whoever is in the job is doing the best they can, so should be given support - more so when things get difficult, not less - and if a crowd turns against the manager in the middle of a tight match, even if they are fed up with things generally, then they shouldn''t be surprised if the team don''t do well for the rest of that match.

Your point about AN I don''t quite understand. How is he being negative? I have got the impression of him that he is a positive kind of person.

For me - and I am looking in from outside to a certain extent - it seems to me that the fans at Norwich can be too negative too easily. AN commented on that when he first arrived, too. For me that is because the feeling is there that we should not be where we are. But we are where we are and accepting the fight, the battles, the ups, the downs, is all part of being a supporter. That is why I get so frustrated when I see managers being undermined. Hughton was in a division that was as tense as it could get and yes he struggled, but he had the fans against him - and how was that going to help him? AN has struggled- but again, what is the point in being against him? Is that going to help him? No. He is the manager and until that changes he needs our support - especially during matches. It''s quite simple really - all I''m saying is save the booing etc until after a match. Against Huddersfield, when AN made the subs, I was thinking great, fresh legs, Jerome back from injury and with the crowd behind them we could still get something from the match. I was mortified when I heard the chanting and I just don''t get the mentality - it seems wrong to me. How the players were supposed to feel inspired after that, I don''t know.

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I often use this board as a barometer to measure my opinion.

If I found Highland Canary was agreeing with me I''d know I was gone in the head and book myself into Dignitas.

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lake district canary wrote:

''''It seems to me that the fans at Norwich can be too negative too easily.''''

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The opposite of this is true.

Please get yourself to some games please before you spout things like this, anyone who has regularly attended this season knows that the fans have been supportive and patient for at least 95% of it.

The other 5% has not been unwarranted by any stretch IMO. How do you think fans of other promotion contenders would react to losing 8 in 10 and falling from 1st to 12th in the space of a quarter of a season? Not to mention the whimper we went down with from the Prem before that.

If you''re basing your opinion on what you read on this messageboard, then you should know it is not close to directly reflecting the same feeling of the fan support during matches.

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It depends how you take AN''s comments.

I take it as "Wes had a really good game and maybe the fact he didn''t he hasn''t played every game recently helped him be fresh for this one".

What I don''t agree with is the length of time he''s been dropped for, when it''s been clear no one else has looked remotely close to providing the same as he does. Whilst he won''t say it I reckon AN regrets it now - and our dire run reflects it.

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I guess we should soon expect to see Neil say that his management of Klose is the reason that he played well in the last two games!

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Hoola Han Solo wrote;

Us proper fans will behave in any way we like during matches, Lakey, and do no enjoy being lectured to by a tin pot "supporter" such as yourself.

Exactly this, its getting so tiresome reading some of the pure crap that comes out of LDC sometimes, try to ignore but the Scots in me makes that difficult.

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From what I have seen, heard and read the one area (there my be others of course) I feel that AN could improve is his emotional skills. I’m not certain he really has any idea how is actions, words, etc. impact on others. In this regard I believe he is a lacking and knows only one way, in other words he treats everyone exactly the same, which as far as I can gather is one hell of a lot of stick and next to no carrot. We are all different and all respond to different stimuli in different ways.

IMO, a similar example of this at play was Roy Keane, an incredibly driven, talented footballer who failed as a manager, mainly because he thought all his players had or should have had the same interior drivers and mindset as him. They didn’t but his man management was based around this premise with disastrous results. In fact, and I paraphrase from the Daily Telegraph, “Keane’s harsh management style was not appreciated by the Sunderland players, who were reported to have celebrated when they heard he had resigned.”

I find it interesting that apparently AN has publicly stated he doesn’t hold a great deal of truck with sports psychology, why he thinks this I have no idea but could it be the Roy Keane syndrome at work?

As a reasonably young man he could certainly overcome this weakness with some help, however if he is fixed in his views then it may be a case of leading a horse to water.......

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Trouble is LC is that it''s not sh*t. There is no logic, common sense or good that will come from fans shouting "you don''t know what you''re doing" in the middle of a match where we are one goal down against a good team with everything to play for. People would rather be in denial or get personal with the messenger for speaking the truth than accepting it. So be it, but it doesn''t change it.

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