Still missing a vital ingredient for survival.

[Hardhouse44 261]

Firstly well done to the board for securing the 2 signings over the last 2 day. They have clearly seen our need for strengthening those positions and rightly obtained what appears to be 2 players capable of playing there. 
 

I still fear we are missing a vital ingredient for survival and that is premiership experience. 
Just one or two players who know how to win enough in this league to survive who have decent premiership experience would I feel really increase our chances of staying up. 
 

If we’re all honest for a moment we know very little if not in many cases nothing about the players we’ve signed. We certainly don’t know there premiership capabilities. 
We are in effect rolling the dice. We don’t know really whether we will roll fives and sixes or a load of ones and twos. 
to keep that analogy going if only we could have picked up a premiership experienced 3 or 4 I feel we would be really much better placed. 
A player or 2 that can help the other guys new and old adapt to the premiership, even helping with game management something I feel Farke struggles with. 

I’m sure this will make me very unpopular but I don’t see a squad capable of surviving even with the new signings. Lack of knowledge of the players may be the reason for that but what I’ve seen so far we are under gunned, too green and a little disorganised. 

[cornish sam 942]

Don't worry, it's not this that has made you unpopular...

[1902 1,167]

Well we can't afford premiership experience aside from people who have proven themselves below the standard required. So this is basically a non starter.

[Haus 259]

10 minutes ago, Hardhouse44 said:

 

I still fear we are missing a vital ingredient for survival and that is premiership experience. 
 

Its not been the Premiership since 2001, so experience of that is hard to get.....

[WD40 720]

Krul, Gunn, Hanley, Max, Kabak, Williams, Kenny, Gilmore, Todd, Pukki…

Lots of prem experience. 

[GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary 1,735]

9 minutes ago, Hardhouse44 said:

Firstly well done to the board for securing the 2 signings over the last 2 day. They have clearly seen our need for strengthening those positions and rightly obtained what appears to be 2 players capable of playing there. 
 

I still fear we are missing a vital ingredient for survival and that is premiership experience. 
Just one or two players who know how to win enough in this league to survive who have decent premiership experience would I feel really increase our chances of staying up. 
 

If we’re all honest for a moment we know very little if not in many cases nothing about the players we’ve signed. We certainly don’t know there premiership capabilities. 
We are in effect rolling the dice. We don’t know really whether we will roll fives and sixes or a load of ones and twos. 
to keep that analogy going if only we could have picked up a premiership experienced 3 or 4 I feel we would be really much better placed. 
A player or 2 that can help the other guys new and old adapt to the premiership, even helping with game management something I feel Farke struggles with. 

I’m sure this will make me very unpopular but I don’t see a squad capable of surviving even with the new signings. Lack of knowledge of the players may be the reason for that but what I’ve seen so far we are under gunned, too green and a little disorganised. 

Agreed...we could have done with a Gary Megson type figure as we did in 92/93...but when you look around I'm not sure who they would be?

The only players who have the kind of experience who we could afford are probably at the end of their career i.e Gary Cahill and you'd question whether they have the legs any more?

[Feedthewolf 4,844]

12 minutes ago, Hardhouse44 said:

Firstly well done to the board for securing the 2 signings over the last 2 day. They have clearly seen our need for strengthening those positions and rightly obtained what appears to be 2 players capable of playing there. 
 

I still fear we are missing a vital ingredient for survival and that is premiership experience. 
Just one or two players who know how to win enough in this league to survive who have decent premiership experience would I feel really increase our chances of staying up. 
 

If we’re all honest for a moment we know very little if not in many cases nothing about the players we’ve signed. We certainly don’t know there premiership capabilities. 
We are in effect rolling the dice. We don’t know really whether we will roll fives and sixes or a load of ones and twos. 
to keep that analogy going if only we could have picked up a premiership experienced 3 or 4 I feel we would be really much better placed. 
A player or 2 that can help the other guys new and old adapt to the premiership, even helping with game management something I feel Farke struggles with. 

I’m sure this will make me very unpopular but I don’t see a squad capable of surviving even with the new signings. Lack of knowledge of the players may be the reason for that but what I’ve seen so far we are under gunned, too green and a little disorganised. 

"Firstly well done to the board for securing the 2 signings over the last 2 day. They have clearly seen our need for strengthening those positions and rightly obtained what appears to be 2 players capable of playing there."

= thinly veiled excuse for a longer-than-average moan about how all the good things that are happening aren't good enough and it still sucks to be a Norwich fan.

Boo hoo.

[lake district canary 4,531]

9 minutes ago, Hardhouse44 said:

what I’ve seen so far we are under gunned, too green and a little disorganised. 

We are what we are and time will tell whether that is enough.  The one thing we do know is that Farke will improve the players the club have brought in.   His ability at managing and getting the best from the young players is excellent - Maddison, Skipp, Godfrey, Lewis, Aarons, Buendia, Cantwell, Omobamidele, etc etc.   You can rest assured he will get the best out of Gilmour, Kabak, Sargent and Tzolis too. 

So the first three games are not going to define our season, of that you can be sure - under prepared due to the cancellation of friendlies, new players not having had enough minutes on a pitch together and three of the hardest games of the season in a row.  This international break will see a reset and a reboot with the players fully on board and raring to go - and a belief that they can do well this season. 

 

 

[Hardhouse44 261]

1 minute ago, lake district canary said:

We are what we are and time will tell whether that is enough.  The one thing we do know is that Farke will improve the players the club have brought in.   His ability at managing and getting the best from the young players is excellent - Maddison, Skipp, Godfrey, Lewis, Aarons, Buendia, Cantwell, Omobamidele, etc etc.   You can rest assured he will get the best out of Gilmour, Kabak, Sargent and Tzolis too. 

So the first three games are not going to define our season, of that you can be sure - under prepared due to the cancellation of friendlies, new players not having had enough minutes on a pitch together and three of the hardest games of the season in a row.  This international break will see a reset and a reboot with the players fully on board and raring to go - and a belief that they can do well this season. 

 

 

I hope you’re right and you may well be. Despite being a big football fan and a season ticket holder for more years than I can remember my knowledge of the European leagues is sketchy at best. 
 

I’m as hopeful as the next fan that we can do something this time round and maybe my opening post came across a bit over critical. That’s not what I meant really. I do fear we are under gunned and don’t really see where we will get the points from. Maybe the new guys will show me how wrong I am. But the experience we lack concerns me. 

[Mr Angry 1,545]

4 minutes ago, Hardhouse44 said:

I hope you’re right and you may well be. Despite being a big football fan and a season ticket holder for more years than I can remember my knowledge of the European leagues is sketchy at best. 
 

I’m as hopeful as the next fan that we can do something this time round and maybe my opening post came across a bit over critical. That’s not what I meant really. I do fear we are under gunned and don’t really see where we will get the points from. Maybe the new guys will show me how wrong I am. But the experience we lack concerns me. 

Arsenal have got a lot of experience-it hasn’t done them much good so far this season.

[TheGunnShow 5,926]

Experience is good if they've been doing it right. Means nothing if they've been dog-sh!te.

[AJ 1,218]

Experience isn't everything, Sabastian Bassong was experienced, he still got relegated twice with us, and 4 times in total in his career. If players are good enough, they will manage. We had a similar squad under Lambert which was full of young, hungry players playing well over their expected ability and we managed to stay up in absolute style. Admittedly, the PL is a completely different league since then, the quality of the teams has definitely increased making the task harder, but we definitely have some decent players in our squad to make a good fist of staying up. Ability is arguably more important than experience, but we've still got the likes of Krul, Hanley/Gibson/Lees-Melou and Pukki who as a spine of the team and very experienced players

[Herman 9,710]

 

[Vazzza 62]

5 hours ago, Hardhouse44 said:

Still missing a vital ingredient for survival

40 Points??

[Jim Smith 2,314]

Don’t think it’s experience it’s leadership and a bit of edge tgst is needed. Hopefully some of the new players have this. 

[Midlands Yellow 3,924]

Confidence at this level with a lack of fear will stand us well. With the added quality this should be in the post soon enough. 

[Chip20 69]

I get what you are saying, OP, and share your concern to an extent. Yes, we have some players with PL experience, but most of that experience is getting relegated from it rather than experience of what it takes to stay in it. 

As others have mentioned already, though, proven PL operators are probably mainly out of our reach. Nobody proven comes cheap or wants to give up a stable team for a likely relegation fight. 

I am, though, both surprised and impressed with what the Club have brought in this summer and really excited to see how the rest of the season unfolds. 

OTBC! 

[Thirsty Lizard 3,155]

If Premier League experience is essential for staying up then Brentford are right royally f***ed!

Had a quick look at their squad and off the top of my head I can't see any of them who have played in the Premier League before (I could be wrong about that, but they sure haven't got much Premier League experience). 

[Unhinged Canary 375]

18 minutes ago, Thirsty Lizard said:

If Premier League experience is essential for staying up then Brentford are right royally f***ed!

Had a quick look at their squad and off the top of my head I can't see any of them who have played in the Premier League before (I could be wrong about that, but they sure haven't got much Premier League experience). 

 

Re: Ivan Toney

On 26 September, he played his first (and only) league match for Newcastle, as an 85th-minute substitute for Aleksandar Mitrović in a 2–2 home draw against Chelsea.

Why aren't we Brentford..... 😭

[Essjayess 307]

8 hours ago, lake district canary said:

We are what we are and time will tell whether that is enough.  The one thing we do know is that Farke will improve the players the club have brought in.   His ability at managing and getting the best from the young players is excellent - Maddison, Skipp, Godfrey, Lewis, Aarons, Buendia, Cantwell, Omobamidele, etc etc.   You can rest assured he will get the best out of Gilmour, Kabak, Sargent and Tzolis too. 

So the first three games are not going to define our season, of that you can be sure - under prepared due to the cancellation of friendlies, new players not having had enough minutes on a pitch together and three of the hardest games of the season in a row.  This international break will see a reset and a reboot with the players fully on board and raring to go - and a belief that they can do well this season. 

 

 

Quite a few of our new arrivals are on international duty in this break...Normann, Kabak, Rashica, even Tzolis..some of them may play 2 or 3 games in this short break. Hope none of them pick up an injury, would just be City's luck, but in anycase i get the feeling DF being DF, not many of these guys will be going straight into the Arsenal  game..expecting a line up there of much like the first 3 games. But for sure its the true start to our season, we finally know the make up of our new  squad and its going to be an interesting ride thru this season for sure.

[Upo 91]

15 hours ago, Hardhouse44 said:

...

I still fear we are missing a vital ingredient for survival and that is premiership experience. 
Just one or two players who know how to win enough in this league to survive who have decent premiership experience would I feel really increase our chances of staying up. 

...
We are in effect rolling the dice. We don’t know really whether we will roll fives and sixes or a load of ones and twos. 
to keep that analogy going if only we could have picked up a premiership experienced 3 or 4 I feel we would be really much better placed. 
...

I’m sure this will make me very unpopular but I don’t see a squad capable of surviving even with the new signings. Lack of knowledge of the players may be the reason for that but what I’ve seen so far we are under gunned, too green and a little disorganised. 

"Knowing how to win" is a bit of an expression of magical thinking. You don't win by knowing. Kabak for example played for Liverpool and won a lot of matches. That should tell us that he was good enough to play for Liverpool. Not that he knew how to win.

Out of the probable regulars for this season, Max, Teemu, Todd, Tim, Kenny and Grant all have substantial PL experience under Farke and they were our best performers in 19/20. They also had very good 20/21 seasons. In fact, Teemu had an absolutely superb season with 30 goal involvements, and Grant took a huge step forward. Out of the best performers in 19/20 we're "only" missing Emi and Sam Byram. Adam, Lucas and Christoph are likely to feature in atleast some games and have PL experience under Farke.

Out of incomings Kabak did well in Liverpool. Most incomings have top tier league experience and have been standout performers in their respective clubs even if the clubs performed poorly.

If we wanted "winners" from PL, we'd have to triple our transfer and wage budget. 

[BobLoz3 492]

Haven't seen the other promoted clubs signing many (if any) players with Premier League experience... 

[Worthy Nigelton 1,037]

The OP is right in that we dont know how good the new signings are. However, as others have said, we arent going to buy proven, established PL players. On the face of it the new signings appear to be exactly what we need and I feel positive about the season but we cant say for sure and we would be very lucky for all of them to be a hit. We'll see. 

[horsefly 4,275]

20 hours ago, Hardhouse44 said:

I still fear we are missing a vital ingredient for survival and that is premiership experience. 

How much "premiership experience" did the Leeds side have last season, or the Sheffield side the season before? (I could go on with further examples but is there really any need?). Ironically, after a year of solid premiership experience the Sheffield squad then went on to perform appallingly. I think it's the quality of the squad that makes the difference, and this is the highest quality squad we have ever had. Time will tell whether it has enough quality.

"The much-fabled ‘Premier League Experience’ is an exaggerated virtue in any player, sought by clubs and cited by pundits as if football in England is an entirely separate sport. Yet history is littered with those who excelled at this level having never encountered it before, as well as many others who have developed an understanding and knowledge of the division’s idiosyncrasies and eccentricities at one club before failing miserably at another. There are so many variables involved in whether a player succeeds in a different environment with new teammates and a fresh manager that boiling it down solely to whether they have played 50 games for Stoke is laughable.

Experience can be a valuable trait but it is not automatically positive and must be harnessed in the right way." 

https://www.football365.com/news/opinion-brentford-norwich-watford-promoted-excellent-transfers-ajer-rose

Edited September 1, 2021 by horsefly

[Christoph Stiepermann 1,131]

Like others have said we simply can't afford it. The only times in recent years that we've been able to sign comfortably mid table quality PL players was when we bought Jarvis and Byram and we only got them because of their injury records. Now I get what the OP is saying, it sure does help, Byram for example looked probably our best player 2 years ago but it's out of our reach not just in transfer fees but wages. If we wanted Nathan Redmond for example, a good but not spectacular mid table level proven PL player we would be looking at about 30m and to increase his current 75k pw wages, that's just never going to happen.

[lake district canary 4,531]

8 hours ago, Essjayess said:

Quite a few of our new arrivals are on international duty in this break...Normann, Kabak, Rashica, even Tzolis..some of them may play 2 or 3 games in this short break. Hope none of them pick up an injury, would just be City's luck, but in anycase i get the feeling DF being DF, not many of these guys will be going straight into the Arsenal  game..expecting a line up there of much like the first 3 games. But for sure its the true start to our season, we finally know the make up of our new  squad and its going to be an interesting ride thru this season for sure.

Good point about the international players. The best thing about the next time the players are all together is that the wretched transfer window is closed, all the players know where they stand and where they will be for the season and can just concentrate on becoming a good team.  That may take a while, but the way Tzolis and Sargent have played so far - and the quality of Rashica, Kabak and Normann not really in doubt, not to mention Williams and Gilmour, it might not take too long!

Edited September 1, 2021 by lake district canary

[BurwellCanary 215]

Surely given the amount of players we have acquired within what the club considers to be affordable (or at least can be recouped through reselling after adding value through Premier experience) is a testament to their ambitions to give it a proper go this year without a huge financial gamble, rather than the debacle last time.

It is now down to DF to show his coaching and tactical skills. He's proven at Champ level - can he get us to play to the next level with what is a new bunch of players with little or no experience? Its going to be really tough but win, lose or draw lets see some improvement and most of all some fighting spirit please - steady on now's your chance...................

 

[Essjayess 307]

23 minutes ago, lake district canary said:

Good point about the international players. The best thing about the next time the players are all together is that the wretched transfer window is closed, all the players know where they stand and where they will be for the season and can just concentrate on becoming a good team.  That may take a while, but the way Tzolis and Sargent have played so far - and the quality of Rashica, Kabak and Normann not really in doubt, not to mention Williams and Gilmour, it might not take too long!

Im trying to make a stab at how this season...and beyond, may pan out Lakey, which i know is a thankless task but anyway..guys like Normann and Kabak have not even met or trained with their new team mates yet let alone play with them. With such a high influx of new, and young players i think it may well be 6 to 10 games into the season before DF finds and starts to play a regular...injuries permitting...eleven to start most games and by then our points total could be bordering on the very low.

So for me it will be those final 25-30 games where we will see what City can really do. Now a lot on how many points will be needed to survive relegation is an unknown of course and can have an important factor whether City  can survive..last season all 3  clubs relegated never even reached 30 points...other seasons its said that 40 points plus is needed so how many points needed could be a 10-12 point difference. If City  find themselves in a situation  needing a bulk of 40 points from 25-30 games its going to be a mammoth task, but thats the  quite possible scenario facing them.

But, if say we do face the drop again..im earnestly praying that City did give their all, the new squad still formed a bond, we just missed out by a small margin and that guys like Normann and Kabak even will see  enough bonding and strength built up into the squad with DF at the helm to actually  stay as permanents and give us a rip roaring Championship then assault the Prem again with an even better  chance next time. This would be a new squad gaining its experience the City way ha ha..but its just pie in the sky and me guessing blindly..all a bit of fun.

[Nuff Said 5,088]

16 hours ago, Herman said:

 

Under-rated classic! There’s something about the complete change of tone from cheekie cockney chappies to mournfulness that gets to me.

[Nuff Said 5,088]

5 minutes ago, Essjayess said:

Im trying to make a stab at how this season...and beyond, may pan out Lakey, which i know is a thankless task but anyway..guys like Normann and Kabak have not even met or trained with their new team mates yet let alone play with them. With such a high influx of new, and young players i think it may well be 6 to 10 games into the season before DF finds and starts to play a regular...injuries permitting...eleven to start most games and by then our points total could be bordering on the very low.

So for me it will be those final 25-30 games where we will see what City can really do. Now a lot on how many points will be needed to survive relegation is an unknown of course and can have an important factor whether City  can survive..last season all 3  clubs relegated never even reached 30 points...other seasons its said that 40 points plus is needed so how many points needed could be a 10-12 point difference. If City  find themselves in a situation  needing a bulk of 40 points from 25-30 games its going to be a mammoth task, but thats the  quite possible scenario facing them.

But, if say we do face the drop again..im earnestly praying that City did give their all, the new squad still formed a bond, we just missed out by a small margin and that guys like Normann and Kabak even will see  enough bonding and strength built up into the squad with DF at the helm to actually  stay as permanents and give us a rip roaring Championship then assault the Prem again with an even better  chance next time. This would be a new squad gaining its experience the City way ha ha..but its just pie in the sky and me guessing blindly..all a bit of fun.

A lesson many on here have yet to learn - every season under Farke has started slowly.