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Do you think we will stay up?

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We are just incredibly inconsistent and the major worry for me is that we're putting in bad performances against poor teams like Watford and Souhampton and Burnley while putting in better performances against good teams like Man City and Arsenal.  That's not the way to survive the Prem which is to grind out results with the odd good result against a better team as the icing on the cake.

 

This messageboard tends to veer between complete doom and gloom after a bad result to optimism after a good result.  There are a mass of posters who only appear after a defeat, a mix of personality types who only like to grouse, WUMs (we know who you are) and binners.

 

Overall the Prem is incredibly tight.  Any team in the bottom 5 can put together a win of 3 wins on the trot and suddenly they're looking well placed to survive.

 

It's frustrating, on balance we are probably going to end up going down this season, but there is still plenty of time to turn it around, all we need is a bit of consistency with our better play.

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Can’t see us staying up. In most games we’ve lost we’ve been well beaten. We’ve lost to teams around us bar Everton and surely they’ll climb out of danger when a new manager arrives.

Our squad comes up short against others in this League and the Board have said they won’t let the club make the mistake of trying to buy our way out of trouble as the previous regime did.

If we have had it let’s go down fighting and not with a whimper.

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Last night result was a result of tiredness in the squad and it certainly showed in the first 45 mins. Only Farke to blame for not rotating accordingly. His approach sometimes does cost us, but do appreciate his hands have been tied most of the season due to injuries. Plus I'm not sure he is a 100% certain what his best first team is, in particular the midfield. IMO its a mix of Amadou and Trybull/Vrancic/Leitner.

We'd certainly be doomed if it anything would happen to Pukki too.

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Perk up.

We must look for positives.

A win in the Premier League will always be a precious thing.

A win away is a particularly tough ask.

Southampton were poor but that first half showing of our players was awful. There may or may not be something in this fatigue theory. We more than matched them (on their own turf) in the second half and could have snatched a (deserved) point but for Byram's miss; and he seems to be making a habit of missing these gold plated chances, and I would favour the return of Lewis despite the incumbent's decent showings thus far. Lewis adds more to the attack.

I digress, so to the point, which has been raised before. None of Southampton, West Ham, Burnley, Palace or Brighton have particularly impressed me by comparison, either when they beat us or subsequently when viewed on the small screen. I do not even rate Place nearly as high as their league position suggests.

Repeat: A win away in the Premier League is a tough ask. All these sides have to visit Carrow road in the second half of the season. In fact our last three home fixtures are against the Hammers, Burnley and Brighton.

Conveniently forgetting the Watford fiasco (which I'll put down to injury fatigue, as I might as well some of the above mentioned defeats,) I feel that we are good enough to pick up lots of lovely points against these teams when they visit Carrow Road.

Relegation is not decided at the beginning of December. Southampton, Palace, Brighton, West ham, Burnley, and of course the likes of Everton and Bournemouth all have to come to our fortress before dishonours are decided.

Clearly there are misgivings (mostly at the back still, imo) but I genuinely feel that we have shown enough to be able to survive and that a lot of teams that have beaten us to date have not been sufficiently superior to our team to suggest that they can finish up above us by rights.  EG: Southampton.

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No, the team is defensively nowhere near the standards required by the premier league. It's highly unusual that a team with 70+ goals against would stay up in Prem and at the moment we're on the way to 82-83 goals against. Even the crappy teams like Soton, Arsenal and Watford score two. Especially defending set pieces is ****.

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50 minutes ago, hogesar said:

We still don't really know who our relegation rivals are going to be although you'd have to assume Watford. After that, any of:

Sheffield United

Burnley

Bournemouth

West Ham

Newcastle

Villa

Brighton

Southampton

Everton

 

 

Well we've played all them with the exception of Sheff U.

So that's 8 games, 9 if you include Watford, against what are realistically teams in the relegation mix.

We've only got 7 points out of a possible 27 from those games.

That is a pretty worrying stat

Lose on Sunday and that'll be 7 points out of 30 against the weaker teams in the League, most of which are not much better than us which is even more worrying

 

Edited by Making Plans
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Sorry Swedishcanary can’t see us beating the blunts at the weekend. They are a bullying team no chance

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I came into the season thinking we'd do okay, but at the moment it's very difficult to be confident.  

With our squad we need 9 or 10 of the 11 to be on their A game every match and the reality is that just isn't going to happen.  On our day we can beat anyone, but I can't see us grinding out a messy win, it's all or nothing.

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We have a squad that is good enough when it is one its game.   but last night too many players were not - and the wilted under the press.

The movement, position and touch of the players receiving the ball was poor last night and when added to  slow passing *& too many touches and inaccurate passing absolutely emphasised Farkes point about small error snowballing,  impacting our own confidence and encouraging an increase in pressing intensity of the opponents press.    There was a lot of focus on Amadou last night but the whole right flank was particularly poor,  & he was joined by Max, Todd and Kenny who all lost possession at least 25% of the time.

 

Add in the continued problems of lack of focus at set pieces (kenny and godfrey found wanting last night) and it wasnt great. 

 

Continue with those lapses and we will struggle to stay up - we need greater consistency.

 

Where do I think our key weaknesses are? 

Primarily it is CDM.  Tettey has shocked me, again, with just how pivotal & consistent he is;  we miss his leadership when he is not there.   I  think Amadou will get there but is clearly adpating to the pace of the prem and will hopefully improve his consistency over the coming months.  But the tettey partner is a problem;   Trybull is anonymous too often,  kenny just not suited to being there, leitner or mario may be the answer but at the moment no one is pulling up trees to be the player next to tettey. It is where we lose games,  when its good we do well - we just dont seem able to do it week in week out at the moment.

 Secondly, I would say the number 10 role currently filled by Kenny / Steipi.   Both have good games but neither are quite good enough to deliver consistently.  We do need a more physical presence in that part of the pitch.  Perm 2 from Onel, Todd, Emi & Mario from the other roles and we are would remain potent.

 

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No I don't i'm afraid because I think too much damage has been done with the losses to rivals in the lest 3 months. Not only have we not won points but we've gifted points to other teams far too easily to boost their points tallies. You cannot stay up if you don't beat any of your rivals at the foot of the table. Look at when we went up under Lambert, we were really good/efficient at that sort of game and it saw us survive relatively comfortably. This season we are the polar opposite. Capable of some great performances against "top half" sides and yet losing all the really important games against our relegation rivals. The fact is that unless we can get a couple of wins out of Shef U, Leicester, Wolves and Villa then the points ratio we are going to need in the second half of the season to stay up is going to be pretty unrealistic and essentially equate to the sort of form that would have you challenging for the Europa league over the course of the season.

The shame is that this side is, in my view, good enough to stay up but almost everything that can do has gone wrong so far this season, some of which (injuries) has been beyond our control and some of which (poor performances like last night, not signing an extra Cb etc) has not.

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I think we can stay up. But we need Tettey to stay fit and Buendia to have a better second half of the season. Pukki can score the goals.

No point throwing in the towel. Remember One City Strong?

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45 minutes ago, tiimuu said:

No, the team is defensively nowhere near the standards required by the premier league. It's highly unusual that a team with 70+ goals against would stay up in Prem and at the moment we're on the way to 82-83 goals against. Even the crappy teams like Soton, Arsenal and Watford score two. Especially defending set pieces is ****.

We need to let Godfrey go and use some of the cash to sign a big powerful experienced centre back that wins things ( especially in the air ) in a no nonsense approach. I am sure Godfrey will be a top top player in a few years time, but to stay up we can’t be finishing the development of our kids. That was what our model was all about, turn kids into multi million pound players, move them on strengthen move on stronger, do it again. Eventually we will be good enough to allow the full development of our kids. 

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17 minutes ago, nutty nigel said:

I think we can stay up. But we need Tettey to stay fit and Buendia to have a better second half of the season. Pukki can score the goals.

No point throwing in the towel. Remember One City Strong?

Only applies when we're winning the league 😂

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43 minutes ago, nutty nigel said:

I think we can stay up. But we need Tettey to stay fit and Buendia to have a better second half of the season. Pukki can score the goals.

No point throwing in the towel. Remember One City Strong?

We can certainly stay up, nor am I throwing in the towel. We can only judge on what we have seen to date, which has been a real mix. Will be a tough fixture on the weekend, so hope we can get 3 points.

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My theory on why we can't beat the teams around us is based on a bit of arrogance.

Against Everton and Arsenal, two much bigger teams, we played the same system but showed them respect: we acknowledge their attacking threat first and foremost, and we generated chances out of that patience.

Watford and Southampton, again same system, but night-and-day performance wise. We go back to being less defensively concerned and more about trying to get the ball to our attackers who are based a lot higher, trying to put leaky defences under pressure. 

Against Watford and last night I saw the same problem, that we lost our shape too often and became almost a 5-0-5 formation; this in turn forces long, high clearances that come straight back and even the best defence in the world will concede if put under constant pressure.

We know we can score goals at this level, so we need to drop the arrogance and set up to be more solid and maybe, we can edge staying up. Also take a wedge out of the transfer budget and give it to a Pulis or an Allardyce as a consultant set-piece coach for a month or so.

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5 minutes ago, Mason 47 said:

We know we can score goals at this level, so we need to drop the arrogance and set up to be more solid and maybe, we can edge staying up. Also take a wedge out of the transfer budget and give it to a Pulis or an Allardyce as a consultant set-piece coach for a month or so.

Screw giving those guys any money! Haha!

As for my answer to the OP.

Yeah. We can survive. Too early in the season to determine anything. Farke wasn't calling the game vs Southampton a six pointer. He recognises, as do I, that lots can happen between now and the end of the season.

Edited by BobLoz3

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5 minutes ago, BobLoz3 said:

Screw giving those guys any money! Haha!

As for my answer to the OP.

Yeah. We can survive. Too early in the season to determine anything. Farke wasn't calling the game vs Southampton a six pointer. He recognises, as do I, that lots can happen between now and the end of the season.

It worries me that Farke doesn't regard games against the likes of Watford and Saints as 6 pointers and I do think that may be a small part of the problem. His calmness can be a great attribute but I do think sometimes he needs to be a bit more fired up. The way we come out after half time so passive really riles me and I worry that he is not getting the players fired up enough for these important games. They are 6 pointers as are any games against Brighton, Burnley, Bournemouth, Villa, Newcastle, West Ham and even the likes of Palace who we could have dragged into the scrap had we not gifted them three points at a crucial point in their season when theior season could have gone either way. Take a couple of points off two of those teams totals and add a couple to ours (i.e. assume we just drew a couple of those games rather than even winning them) and the table would look a lot tighter and a bit more encouraging  but instead we have absolutely gifted them all 3 points without them having to play very well to earn them. It worries me that he does not have us fired up enough for these games. We seem to have no problem firing ourselves up to play the "bigger" or more glamourous clubs where, apart from Man U, the level of our performances have been much higher. 

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14 minutes ago, Jim Smith said:

It worries me that Farke doesn't regard games against the likes of Watford and Saints as 6 pointers and I do think that may be a small part of the problem. His calmness can be a great attribute but I do think sometimes he needs to be a bit more fired up. The way we come out after half time so passive really riles me and I worry that he is not getting the players fired up enough for these important games. They are 6 pointers as are any games against Brighton, Burnley, Bournemouth, Villa, Newcastle, West Ham and even the likes of Palace who we could have dragged into the scrap had we not gifted them three points at a crucial point in their season when theior season could have gone either way. Take a couple of points off two of those teams totals and add a couple to ours (i.e. assume we just drew a couple of those games rather than even winning them) and the table would look a lot tighter and a bit more encouraging  but instead we have absolutely gifted them all 3 points without them having to play very well to earn them. It worries me that he does not have us fired up enough for these games. We seem to have no problem firing ourselves up to play the "bigger" or more glamourous clubs where, apart from Man U, the level of our performances have been much higher. 

Farke has shown us many times that he places a lot of stock in statistical analysis. He will be all too aware of the importance of these games; I think his comments in the media are to try to take the pressure off his players. We don't know what he's like in the dressing room, but even if he is calmness personified, it's a balancing act - people can be too fired up, just look what happened to Joe Hart's career.

I think, if anything, he's going the right way about it if he's trying to get the players to 'shut out the noise' and keep playing their own game the way he's told them to. It took a while to get it right in the Championship, but once we did click it was brilliant. He's definitely learning, but ultimately we may run out of time this season.

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2 hours ago, nutty nigel said:

I think we can stay up. But we need Tettey to stay fit and Buendia to have a better second half of the season. Pukki can score the goals.

No point throwing in the towel. Remember One City Strong?

Ah, a positive voice in the wilderness......how did I know it would be yours Nutty ? 😉

It isn't a case of towel throwing, more a case of being realistic. We just don't have that little bit of extra quality needed.

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4 minutes ago, Feedthewolf said:

Farke has shown us many times that he places a lot of stock in statistical analysis. He will be all too aware of the importance of these games; I think his comments in the media are to try to take the pressure off his players. We don't know what he's like in the dressing room, but even if he is calmness personified, it's a balancing act - people can be too fired up, just look what happened to Joe Hart's career.

I think, if anything, he's going the right way about it if he's trying to get the players to 'shut out the noise' and keep playing their own game the way he's told them to. It took a while to get it right in the Championship, but once we did click it was brilliant. He's definitely learning, but ultimately we may run out of time this season.

Also, if you call Southampton away a critical 6 point game pre-match and narrowly lose - it's much harder to expect the players to re-motivate themselves instantly for the next game.

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The word inconsistency appear throughout this thread and where it doesn't it is often implied.  I have asked this question on the Genuine Question thread, why are we inconsistent?  We all know the level of performance we can achieve and a player's ability to pass, tackle, head, etc. etc. does not change from one game to another, assuming the same level of fitness, so again why is the level of performance so varied, not just from the players but from the management team too I suspect.  Given the ability level remains the same then what is different, obviously the opposition but on the basis Performance = Ability + Attitude (Mindset) and personally I believe you can have the ability of Ronaldo or Van Dijk but if the mindset is not right then you may as well play for a Sunday League Pub Team.  Therefore taking the opposition out of the equation, which I fully understand we can't but play along for a while, the only difference between performances is mindset, and I include DF here.  Does the club have specialist goal keeping coaches, defence coaches, nutritional and physiotherapist coaches, yes they do.  Do they have a psychologist (Mindset Management Coach) on board?  I don't know the answer, however I suspect not.  To summarise, is this an area in which the club can help DF and more importantly does he recognise and/or value the importance of this help, if he does then get it done I say, if he doesn't/will not then I believe we are in for a tough ride.  Consistency is key, if you were tasked with producing a 2 inch widget but they all varied between 1 inch and 3 inches then obviously you are on the road to massive failure unless you are able to replicate a process that consistently produces 2 inch widgets.  Football is in reality no different, what is it they we get right when we produce top flight performances and as already stated the ability remains the same (or improves) consequently it must be mindset. Let's put something in place to replicate the superb performance mindset.

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5 hours ago, Jobsworth Canary said:

We should be planning for next season’s promotion push 

That is not guaranteed at all. We might drop the other way and be the richest club in Div 2!

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15 hours ago, NCFC198 said:

Interested to hear peoples honest view. Can we realistically survive and if so where are the points coming from? What's the plan? Not even half way through yet, but its looking tough. 

Or do you think we are as good as down, out of ideas and out of our depth emphasised after a naive performance tonight? 

I felt very positive after the weekend, but so very negative tonight. So I'm looking for some honest thoughts from you guys as to what you are thinking? 

 

We were down before the season started. The owners, boy Webber and boy Farke all knew this and the public statements they made during the summer (which were backed up by their actions, or lack thereof) simply confirmed this fact. 

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5 hours ago, Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB said:

No, I have always thought we would struggle to stay up. We are not a bad side, just not quite good enough, but as I have said before I intend to enjoy the season whatever happens........

Yes, I'm with this. I don't think we've ever had enough quality, irrespective of the injury crisis at centre back, but if you let in 2 goals every game winning is very hard. A fit and firing Timm Klose may have made a difference, but last season's defence was never going to be good enough. 

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Do I think we stay up and all I got to say is WE DOWN THE PAN AND WE GOING DOWN, at least we have the old firm derby match to look forward to

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8 minutes ago, baldy09 said:

Do I think we stay up and all I got to say is WE DOWN THE PAN AND WE GOING DOWN, at least we have the old firm derby match to look forward to

Tragic.

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