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nutty nigel

Are we all happy tonight?

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Yes. TBF that was like watching Norwich of old. Stood on the terraces i never thought the result was in doubt, even when Sara gave them a goal on a plate. To my mind we even played within ourselves. Where did that come from? 🤔

Onwards.

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1 hour ago, nutty nigel said:

Three points away from home.

Up to 4th.

Kenny scored.

Two Rays Funds wins adding £40 to the pot.

If Carlsberg made Saturdays...

I think / feel it’s like Groundhog Day another underwhelming performance but getting a result that buys smith more time to try and get a tune out of the squad. Who knows he might well and we kick into gear. Not keeping a clean sheet was a shame. 

On the whole could be better could be worse. It’s just a game at the end of the day. 

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1 hour ago, Branston Pickle said:

I think Sara and Hayden are getting better each game - it’s a annoying we have the w-c break coming up just as we are beginning to show a bit more.

I think it’s a good thing, we have a few injuries that will come back after the World Cup and should give smith more time on the training ground. At the very least we can learn how to beat the first man on a corner. 

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11 minutes ago, shefcanary said:

Yes. TBF that was like watching Norwich of old. Stood on the terraces i never thought the result was in doubt, even when Sara gave them a goal on a plate. To my mind we even played within ourselves. Where did that come from? 🤔

Onwards.

I'd love to have been there but I'm out to pasture these days. Sounds like a proper football Saturday 👍

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Bit more positive after today’s result, certainly feel confident in saying we’ll get the playoffs this year which did look much less assured 3 games ago, but ultimately there hasn’t been enough in this revival to convince me that we’ll reach the top 2 this season (which is what the squad can definitely achieve with the right leadership IMO).

So pretty unconvinced about Smith long-term and don’t think he’s the man to take us up, but I suppose we can’t complain too much as long as we’re in for a decent shout of getting there to the autos - and it’s still definitely doable right now (on paper at least even if I don’t personally believe it will happen). 

I had felt that the past couple of weeks would’ve served as a good chance to change coach before the upcoming break. The Stoke result and subsequent upswing in form has put that to bed, so it’s very much a case of getting behind the coach for the second half of the season. However, the situation will continue to be close to a knife edge, and Smith despite taking a step or two back from the abyss possibly has more doubters now than he did after 3 games when we were bottom of the league. Realistically he’s only about 3/4 bad results away from full-on mutiny at Carrow Road which could make things untenable, and if that does transpire soon after the World Cup it will feel like we wasted a great chance to reset mid season. 

Dont think it makes for a pleasant forum to repeatedly call for a coach to go and with the international break now I don’t think it’s going to happen soon either. So best bet now is to stay on board and hope that Smith can get a higher gear out of this Norwich team, whilst remaining unconvinced. We’re nearly halfway through the season and I don’t think I’ve seen a fully convincing 90 minutes of football, but there have been individual improvements (Hayden, Sara, Aarons, McLean) which we can hope to build from.

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2 hours ago, Pyro Pete said:

Max was named Player of the Match. Yet doesn't look too happy...

Fg04mnaX0AITnM6.jpg

Player of the match?! Is this in case a female ever makes a male professional side? 

Can't think of any reason why man of the match can't be used. Most valuable player might be better for us anyway since anyone half decent will get sold on

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We should have blown Rotherham away. I don't buy this tough game crap. They're a team of 30 something journeymen. Hall and Peltier are average mid table Championship defenders at best. They're 17th in the league. They've lost 3 on the spin. They've registered 1 win in 6 with a minus 2 goal difference. We should be blowing them away. Our bench is worth more than their starting 11, hell, their match day squad.

Edited by Michael Starr
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36 minutes ago, Michael Starr said:

We should have blown Rotherham away. I don't buy this tough game crap. They're a team of 30 something journeymen. Hall and Peltier are average mid table Championship defenders at best. They're 17th in the league. They've lost 3 on the spin. They've registered 1 win in 6 with a minus 2 goal difference. We should be blowing them away. Our bench is worth more than their starting 11, hell, their match day squad.

Careful now. You'll have Cambridgeshire along later with his hilarious 'we didn't win 3-0/hands in pockets bit'.

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Obviously I'm not happy that Smith's job is now guaranteed and we won't be using the World Cup break to bed in a better manager since I still believe he is mediocre and will never make us more than the sum of our parts.

However, I agree that the whole-game performance yesterday was the best it has been all season and if that level could become our average, rather than the best in our twenty games so far, we would be a shoo-in for the play-offs and might even challenge for automatic promotion. We looked comfortable throughout.

But it seemed clear to me that our players were individually much more gifted than Rotherham's. So, to anyone who thinks this one decent performance promises other improved performances ahead, I'd counter that it took twenty games to get here and let's see if we regress to our mean before we get too excited.

 

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6 hours ago, Canario said:

Player of the match?! Is this in case a female ever makes a male professional side? 

Can't think of any reason why man of the match can't be used. Most valuable player might be better for us anyway since anyone half decent will get sold on

Took the words out of my mouth Canario. On a par with Sky/Radio subtly now calling it "GAME day" instead of "Match Day". 

GAME Day, PLAYER of the Match 🙄😴

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39 minutes ago, Richard Richard said:

 

GAME Day, PLAYER of the Match 🙄😴

Is as if we rely on the USA for all forms of our culture 

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7 hours ago, Canario said:

Player of the match?! Is this in case a female ever makes a male professional side? 

Can't think of any reason why man of the match can't be used. Most valuable player might be better for us anyway since anyone half decent will get sold on

I mean, why does it matter? You understand the abbreviation just fine so what difference does it make? 

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I’m just happy we are back to winning ways and finding our feet again.

Everyone has a bad run at some point during their season and it later sometimes proves to be costly. I just hope it hasn’t cost us an automatic place with the lottery of the play offs to come!.

Anyhow, I’m only coming on here to talk about Norwich, the team I support from now on, not all the rubbish going on right now on the MSM that keeps getting discussed every night. It’s bad enough seeing it on the news all the time when I get back and the better half has 5 News on.

So yes, I’m staying in this section, talking about the reason why we are all here in the first place….. Norwich City!.

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8 hours ago, Canario said:

Player of the match?! Is this in case a female ever makes a male professional side? 

Can't think of any reason why man of the match can't be used. Most valuable player might be better for us anyway since anyone half decent will get sold on

Does it matter how it's described? You understood the context so that's all that matters.

 

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10 hours ago, Nexus_Canary said:

I want my club back and under Dean Smith that is not happening. 
Let me winge and moan to my hearts content and mind your own business.

image.png.69e10472d97dc5cdf11889f908ee4c51.png

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8 hours ago, Canario said:

Player of the match?! Is this in case a female ever makes a male professional side? 

Can't think of any reason why man of the match can't be used. Most valuable player might be better for us anyway since anyone half decent will get sold on

In the days of gender fluidity, if a male player  in the men's game chooses to define as something else then that has to be respected. 

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5 hours ago, Michael Starr said:

We should have blown Rotherham away. I don't buy this tough game crap. They're a team of 30 something journeymen. Hall and Peltier are average mid table Championship defenders at best. They're 17th in the league. They've lost 3 on the spin. They've registered 1 win in 6 with a minus 2 goal difference. We should be blowing them away. Our bench is worth more than their starting 11, hell, their match day squad.

We didn't blow them away under Farke when they were in even worse form than this season, though? The league leaders in Burnley needed 102 minutes of football to grab a winner against them?

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11 hours ago, Petriix said:

I'm pretty satisfied with that. The diamond is possibly a bit too open for my liking these days, but we carried a lot of thrrat throughout and were reasonably disciplined out of possession.

Kenny looked pretty solid in his preferred position. Sara had some moments of brilliance (and some not so good). Aarons was back to his best and Hayden put in his best performance yet.

Yeah I felt diamond away from home was a risk but it paid off. Smith still willing to make big decisions that he knows if result doesn't go his way will heap pressure. That's a good thing, as you can see managers going into their shell a bit and keeping it safe. Dropping Cantwell and bringing in McLean are big shouts but they turned out to be the right ones.

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11 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

In the days of gender fluidity, if a male player  in the men's game chooses to define as something else then that has to be respected. 

It's called mens football, as opposed to ladies football, so Man of the Match is perfectly fine. If a player isn't a man or identified as one, what is he doing in "mens football" at all?   Or maybe it should be "Male of the match"....or maybe mens football itself should be called "Male and all variations thereof Football".................

Crazy times.

Edited by lake district canary
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I was behind the goal and first half Rotherham created quite a few really good chances. Their first striker (no 14) was definitely causing us problems. It must have been a problem for them that he went off injured and his replacement promptly went off injured also just before half time so for the 2nd half they were down to their 3rd choice striker.

 

So I’m happy about the result and the game , but we were far from convincing. To win auto promotion you’re not going to blow away teams  every week, there are going to be weeks when you grind out the results too. But some games you should be blowing away teams. The problem for me under Smith is that grinding out results seems to be as good as it gets. 
 

I saw us beat Rotherham 2-1 under Farke when Godfrey scored the winner. The difference then was we looked the better team overall and their goal was a fabulous individual effort from that guy who’s name I forget but he was bought by a prem team the next season, and I thought 2-1 flattered Rotherham. Yesterday I thought Rotherham were good value for 2-1 and a draw would not have been unfair. That’s the difference.

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22 minutes ago, lake district canary said:

It's called mens football, as opposed to ladies football, so Man of the Match is perfectly fine. If a player isn't a man or identified as one, what is he doing in "mens football" at all?   Or maybe it should be "Male of the match"....or maybe mens football itself should be called "Male and all variations thereof Football".................

Crazy times.

Not really though. It’s progressive times. We all know the limited number of openly gay footballers due to the abuse they’d potentially receive. Footballers that don’t identify as male but love the game biologically play in the game with men, but it doesn’t mean they see themselves as male and they’d understandably feel uncomfortable being open with this too, due to it being more recently recognised than homosexuality, which is still a huge target of abuse. I appreciate it’s a minority that will feel this way but ask yourself whether it actually does you ANY harm whatsoever to change MOTM to POTM (no) and then ask whether there is the chance that calling someone who does not identify as a man the MOTM, that this might make them feel uncomfortable (yes). As it literally makes not one ounce of difference to you then what on earth is the harm in it? 

Edited by SwearyCanary

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4 minutes ago, It's Character Forming said:

I was behind the goal and first half Rotherham created quite a few really good chances. Their first striker (no 14) was definitely causing us problems. It must have been a problem for them that he went off injured and his replacement promptly went off injured also just before half time so for the 2nd half they were down to their 3rd choice striker.

 

So I’m happy about the result and the game , but we were far from convincing. To win auto promotion you’re not going to blow away teams  every week, there are going to be weeks when you grind out the results too. But some games you should be blowing away teams. The problem for me under Smith is that grinding out results seems to be as good as it gets. 
 

I saw us beat Rotherham 2-1 under Farke when Godfrey scored the winner. The difference then was we looked the better team overall and their goal was a fabulous individual effort from that guy who’s name I forget but he was bought by a prem team the next season, and I thought 2-1 flattered Rotherham. Yesterday I thought Rotherham were good value for 2-1 and a draw would not have been unfair. That’s the difference.

I think that's slightly unfair. The game you're talking about under Farke we actually gave Rotherham more chances and didn't create anymore ourselves. The other time we beat Rotherham we needed a 95 minute penalty to beat them, also under Farke.

Had the ref done his job they'd likely have been down to 10 and we would definitely have had a penalty for handball...

Small margins, as they say.

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32 minutes ago, hogesar said:

Yeah I felt diamond away from home was a risk but it paid off. Smith still willing to make big decisions that he knows if result doesn't go his way will heap pressure. That's a good thing, as you can see managers going into their shell a bit and keeping it safe. Dropping Cantwell and bringing in McLean are big shouts but they turned out to be the right ones.

My biggest criticism of Smith has been that he doesn't set us up to defend consistently. While I don't think you can blame the manager for us not taking our big chances, you can blame them for leaving huge gaps at the back.

On the whole I think we're covering better in the last three games. Runners all seem to be tracked (if not always as closely as they should be) and we're not facing the same overloads we previously were. 

The issue with chopping and changing is that the roles and responsibilities change, and that makes it hard to be consistent. But maybe a diamond is more suited to the individuals we have. 

Hayden went from having a midfield partner to being the sole 'enforcer' but actually seemed to do better. Our attacking transitions largely bypassed him so maybe the job was more suited to his strengths.

Sargent is a different player altogether as a striker. Sara and Kenny both perfectly suit those (narrow) wide midfield roles going box to box and seem to cope ok with the defensive elements. 

As long as the 4-3-3 remains consigned to the dustbin, I am pretty happy with the direction of things.

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59 minutes ago, lake district canary said:

It's called mens football, as opposed to ladies football, so Man of the Match is perfectly fine. If a player isn't a man or identified as one, what is he doing in "mens football" at all?   Or maybe it should be "Male of the match"....or maybe mens football itself should be called "Male and all variations thereof Football".................

Crazy times.

Why do you care?

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1 hour ago, hogesar said:

We didn't blow them away under Farke when they were in even worse form than this season, though? The league leaders in Burnley needed 102 minutes of football to grab a winner against them?

This is true, but it's a mindset thing isn't it? We should be thinking like champions and believing that we can roll any team in this league. We should be saying to ourselves... why are we scraping wins against Rotherham United? Why aren't we smashing them? Manchester City don't fear anyone. We've mostly been playing with fear for making mistakes this season. Our performance on Saturday was a highlight... a 2-1 win which, btw, could have gone the other way quite easily.

Basic sports winner mentality. Michael Owen used to say to himself "I will score today" before every game. His book is fascinating by the way. We just need that mindset. The fans need it, the players need it, the coach needs it. We kinda experienced it a little with Farke... the gun hoe we will outscore you thing was a pretty fun ride? He just needed better players to work with.

Edited by Michael Starr

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2 hours ago, SwearyCanary said:

I mean, why does it matter? You understand the abbreviation just fine so what difference does it make? 

It's the same as the current trend for people to start their sentence with "I mean", verbally and written.

Whatever's fashionable I guess 🤷

 

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3 minutes ago, Richard Richard said:

It's the same as the current trend for people to start their sentence with "I mean", verbally and written.

Whatever's fashionable I guess 🤷

 

Inclusivity is fashionable. Ok. 

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Re. 'Person of the Match', can I just make some aesthetic objections?

'Man of the Match' has the alliteration of the repeated 'm', the assonance of the repeated 'a', plus the pleasing rhythm of OooO.

'Person of the Match' loses the alliteration and the assonance and has no rhythm at all.

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49 minutes ago, Michael Starr said:

This is true, but it's a mindset thing isn't it? We should be thinking like champions and believing that we can roll any team in this league. We should be saying to ourselves... why are we scraping wins against Rotherham United? Why aren't we smashing them? Manchester City don't fear anyone. We've mostly been playing with fear for making mistakes this season. Our performance on Saturday was a highlight... a 2-1 win which, btw, could have gone the other way quite easily.

Basic sports winner mentality. Michael Owen used to say to himself "I will score today" before every game. His book is fascinating by the way. We just need that mindset. The fans need it, the players need it, the coach needs it. We kinda experienced it a little with Farke... the gun hoe we will outscore you thing was a pretty fun ride? He just needed better players to work with.

You mean as fans we should be doing this?

Totally agree. Every time I go I believe we will win. If we played Man City tomorrow I could spend the rest of today trying to convince a disbelieving message board why we could win. Most would laugh at me, and deride me as being a happy clapper, so great to have you on my side 👍

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