Who still thinks these players aren't good enough?

[Gordon Bennett 783]

It was never about the squads ability, it was always the coaching, the lost belief and the lack of confidence. 

[Capt. Pants 4,225]

4 hours ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

One of the first things Wagner did when he got here was to restore double training sessions (Which Smith had ended for reasons unknown..) and checked in on the injured players to see how they were doing and joked about getting them back on the grass soon as possible.

Fair to say Wagner is keen to try and stamp out our low energy/Lazy attitude I did feel some of our players were displaying..

Shock tactics to see who's up for it and who isn't. I can't remember what Smith was doing at a comparative time but I'm guessing it was to make us better organised. He may have done that initially but since then there is no doubt we became more Slothlike.

Edited January 14, 2023 by Capt. Pants

[littleyellowbirdie 2,542]

5 hours ago, kick it off said:

Dean Smith, I mean @littleyellowbirdie is conspicuous by his absence...

I've been consumed by running the sound for two performances of a pantomime today (oh no I wasn't), but what a cracking result.

If Norwich are winning, I'm happy. Look forward to taking in the highlights. OTBC.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,542]

7 hours ago, Petriix said:

Lots of posts recently have questioned the quality of the squad. I've been pretty critical of the recruitment, but I've repeatedly highlighted that most of our last Championship winning team are still here.

What we're seeing today is the players being freed to express themselves. The contrast with Smith's incoherent system is night and day. Is anyone going to come out and claim that Smith was a decent manager who did his best with a poor squad?

As a general point though, the players were completely free to express themselves for a couple of games without any manager at all, and they lost 2 out of 2 in spite of the supporters 1000% more behind them than when Smith was still there. so Smith's record was better than no manager at all.

You have to have guidance to get anything, and whether the guidance is the best you can have is always something that's difficult to judge. But I would say it's clear that Wagner is vastly superior to Smith, which is great.

Edited January 14, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[All the Germans 1,075]

2 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

As a general point though, the players were completely free to express themselves for a couple of games without any manager at all, and they lost 2 out of 2 in spite of the supporters 1000% more behind them than when Smith was still there. so Smith's record was better than no manager at all.

You have to have guidance to get anything, and whether the guidance is the best you can have is always something that's difficult to judge. But I would say it's clear that Wagner is vastly superior to Smith, which is great.

Whilst I think you will ultimately be correct, I think based upon two games it's far too early to say he is vastly superior? My big gripe with football in general is fans flip flop from game to game from amazing to terrible, with nothing in between.

Wagner looks really promising and the bar isn't exactly high from Smith, but to say it's clear, based upon such little evidence, is a stretch. It will be clear in 5-10 games when we (hopefully) have continued how we have started.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,542]

6 minutes ago, All the Germans said:

Whilst I think you will ultimately be correct, I think based upon two games it's far too early to say he is vastly superior? My big gripe with football in general is fans flip flop from game to game from amazing to terrible, with nothing in between.

Wagner looks really promising and the bar isn't exactly high from Smith, but to say it's clear, based upon such little evidence, is a stretch. It will be clear in 5-10 games when we (hopefully) have continued how we have started.

Do you know what? Excessive caution is boring. We go manager to manager with someone saying 'I'm not convinced until x many games'.

4-0 is a blistering result. This is the same squad Smith had and we haven't seen a result like this in this season. Forget caveats; enjoy it. I'm happy to look like a moron if they keep getting results like this.

OTBC.

And, furthermore, I will continue with a tangential, slightly drunken, ramble inspired by my experiences of the last few days sound engineering a pantomime.

I took on the task of sound engineering a pantomime with a live band, sound effects, and a cast with radio microphones. Day one of rigging was a bit of a reality check that, while I have masses of complementary experience, I'd never done a live event like this before, let alone with such a huge array of sound sources to manage.

At the end of the first day, there were a few adapter cables that I was short of, and so I contacted a very experienced pro sound engineer up the road (he gets royalty checks for broadcast of music he has produced) to see if he could lend me the cables I needed. He kindly obliged, and came along, and just kept on giving me more and more advice to the point he was sticking around in the setup.

Anyway, Ronny Corbett style, I now get to the point: We'd set up the radio microphone on one of performers and we got her singing with the band, and he starts fiddling with the EQ. Literally, after about a minute, he'd singled out the room resonances and compensated for them so that we wouldn't get any howl from feedback with her microphones.

The reason I mention it is because it resonated (no pun intended) with the discussion about XG and Wagner's dismissal of it in a recent press conference, in contrast to Smith's regular references. The reason I say that is because you can break down the process that my sound engineer mate went through in a minute with spectrum analysers, calculations of the size of the room and so on, but ultimately his decades of experience and instinct completely bypassed that; the thought did occur to me that maybe XG is a very valuable tool for the people who aren't so gifted that their subconscious does all the work and then some far more efficiently.

[nutty nigel 7,528]

You're buzzing @littleyellowbirdie

Glad it went well🙃👍

[Indy 3,297]

Sounds like you had a good day LYB, good response tonight matey…..enjoy the win, let’s hope it’s the start of great things again.

[GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary 1,748]

49 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

As a general point though, the players were completely free to express themselves for a couple of games without any manager at all, and they lost 2 out of 2 in spite of the supporters 1000% more behind them than when Smith was still there. so Smith's record was better than no manager at all.

You have to have guidance to get anything, and whether the guidance is the best you can have is always something that's difficult to judge. But I would say it's clear that Wagner is vastly superior to Smith, which is great.

We drew vs Reading..

[All the Germans 1,075]

17 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Do you know what? Excessive caution is boring. We go manager to manager with someone saying 'I'm not convinced until x many games'.

4-0 is a blistering result. This is the same squad Smith had and we haven't seen a result like this in this season. Forget caveats; enjoy it. I'm happy to look like a moron if they keep getting results like this.

for the people who aren't so gifted that their subconscious does all the work and then some far more efficiently.

I agree. Not flip flopping from result to result is more boring than being a sensationalist like Cambridge and changing with the wind. Because it is more boring, it doesn't mean it isn't right.

Wagner has made a brilliant start and I think he will be better than Smith (not particularly hard to be honest), but I'm reserving judgement in the same way that I would if we had lost today, one swallow does not make a summer. I also won't jump on his back like certain people will after a couple of poor results. 

PS, I strongly  disagree that waiting more than two games (one of which we lost) is "excessively cautious".

[BroadstairsR 2,160]

6 hours ago, All the Germans said:

Whilst I think you will ultimately be correct, I think based upon two games it's far too early to say he is vastly superior? My big gripe with football in general is fans flip flop from game to game from amazing to terrible, with nothing in between.

Wagner looks really promising and the bar isn't exactly high from Smith, but to say it's clear, based upon such little evidence, is a stretch. It will be clear in 5-10 games when we (hopefully) have continued how we have started.

Ok it was only one game and we must not get carried awy even though it was the best performance of the season so far.

One pleasing thing of note was the performance of players that there were doubts about.

I've never been too keen on Dowell and didn't think he had enough in his locker to be anything but a bit part player at Carrow Road.

I wasn't happy to see him in the starting line-up, and although he has his admirers, I'm guessing quite a few thought like me.

In the event he had his best game for City by a mile.

Sara has uptil now been rather timid and seemed to lack confidence raising doubts about his fee. Yesterday he was involved a lot more and was more influential. He also had his best game for City and proved his worth.

Mr. "Only good for the last twenty minutes against tired legs" Hernandez ... the supersub also put in the complete performance, including defensively. My commentator praised him throughout. He also had a couple of decent effots at goal ... and perhaps a couple of poor ones.

These could only be promising signs for the future under Wagner. The squad has some depth.

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by BroadstairsR

[Creedence Clearwater Couto 1,271]

1 hour ago, BroadstairsR said:

Ok it was only one game and we must not get carried awy even though it was the best performance of the season so far.

One pleasing thing of note was the performance of players that there were doubts about.

I've never been too keen on Dowell and didn't think he had enough in his locker to be anything but a bit part player at Carrow Road.

I wasn't happy to see him in the starting line-up, and although he has his admirers, I'm guessing quite a few thought like me.

In the event he had his best game for City by a mile.

Sara has uptil now been rather timid and seemed to lack confidence raising doubts about his fee. Yesterday he was involved a lot more and was more influential. He also had his best game for City and proved his worth.

Mr. "Only good for the last twenty minutes against tired legs" Hernandez ... the supersub also put in the complete performance, including defensively. My commentator praised him throughout. He also had a couple of decent effots at goal ... and perhaps a couple of poor ones.

These could only be promising signs for the future under Wagner. The squad has some depth.

 

Good to hear. I didn’t watch the game so intrigued to know how he did. 

He’s a player that can really set the tempo of out play. I really rate him at this level, and he was doing it for Smith at the start of the season - but he stopped using him as much.

Also, I’d really love to hear his song on a regular basis again. One of the best!

[Petriix 2,834]

7 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

4-0 is a blistering result. This is the same squad Smith had and we haven't seen a result like this in this season.

Exactly. It is only one game... But it's the most comprehensive performance since Farke's B team beat Bournemouth 6-0 in the cup. Smith didn't produce a single performance like it in his entire tenure.

[Van wink 2,994]

14 hours ago, Robert N. LiM said:

to answer more seriously, this group of players should be good enough to finish in the top six of this league this season. They clearly weren't going to under Smith, which was why his sacking was correct. Hopefully this isn't just new manager bounce and the tune that Wagner clearly got out of them today can last as long as his namesake's.

Wise words, I like everyone else got carried away with the performance yesterday, and why not after all the dross we were subjected to under Smith, but lets hope we can sustain the level of performance and improve over the remaining season. 

[kick it off 1,948]

8 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

I've been consumed by running the sound for two performances of a pantomime today (oh no I wasn't), but what a cracking result.

If Norwich are winning, I'm happy. Look forward to taking in the highlights. OTBC.

Fair enough, we were on fire first half, it was so very different to what we've seen for the last year. Im optimistic about this bejnt the start of a bright new era. Glad your panto went well 👍

[Van wink 2,994]

2 minutes ago, kick it off said:

Fair enough, we were on fire first half, it was so very different to what we've seen for the last year. Im optimistic about this bejnt the start of a bright new era. Glad your panto went well 👍

Yes it does all sort of feel right 

[daly 501]

17 hours ago, keelansgrandad said:

Yeah. Deano was a Cnut is more correct.

Yes they showed real class

 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,542]

10 hours ago, All the Germans said:

I agree. Not flip flopping from result to result is more boring than being a sensationalist like Cambridge and changing with the wind. Because it is more boring, it doesn't mean it isn't right.

Wagner has made a brilliant start and I think he will be better than Smith (not particularly hard to be honest), but I'm reserving judgement in the same way that I would if we had lost today, one swallow does not make a summer. I also won't jump on his back like certain people will after a couple of poor results. 

PS, I strongly  disagree that waiting more than two games (one of which we lost) is "excessively cautious".

In some respects, given the low esteem with which Smith was held (some view him as worse than Hughton) I'm really astonished to see any holding back in judgement now given the certainty with which Smith was frequently derided by most. I'm perfectly happy to say we're clearly better off for having sacked Smith, in spite of my own previous reservations about disposing of managers mid-season.

Home game against Preston earlier this season: 2-3 loss (GD -1)

Away game against Preston yesterday: 4-0 win (GD +4)

Literally the only substantial difference here is the manager. Caution's fair enough if you're talking about subtle improvements here and there, but it's clear that Wagner's impact in less than a couple of weeks has been astronomical.

I agree we need to see conistency in results to get promotion again this season, but given we've achieved outstanding consistency under Farke in two Championship seasons, given that Wagner has pretty much the same footballing structure supporting him as Farke did for those outstanding seasons, given that Wagner has much the same fitness philosophy as Farke, and given that Wagner clearly is a seriously good manager to have achieved so much here in so little time, I think there's every reason to be optimistic regarding the final outcome of the season.

In some respects though, given people are so quick to judge impending doom very quickly after bad results, I don't think there's any defence for reserving judgement in the face of outstandingly good results.

[Midlands Yellow 3,974]

10 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Do you know what? Excessive caution is boring. We go manager to manager with someone saying 'I'm not convinced until x many games'.

4-0 is a blistering result. This is the same squad Smith had and we haven't seen a result like this in this season. Forget caveats; enjoy it. I'm happy to look like a moron if they keep getting results like this.

OTBC.

And, furthermore, I will continue with a tangential, slightly drunken, ramble inspired by my experiences of the last few days sound engineering a pantomime.

I took on the task of sound engineering a pantomime with a live band, sound effects, and a cast with radio microphones. Day one of rigging was a bit of a reality check that, while I have masses of complementary experience, I'd never done a live event like this before, let alone with such a huge array of sound sources to manage.

At the end of the first day, there were a few adapter cables that I was short of, and so I contacted a very experienced pro sound engineer up the road (he gets royalty checks for broadcast of music he has produced) to see if he could lend me the cables I needed. He kindly obliged, and came along, and just kept on giving me more and more advice to the point he was sticking around in the setup.

Anyway, Ronny Corbett style, I now get to the point: We'd set up the radio microphone on one of performers and we got her singing with the band, and he starts fiddling with the EQ. Literally, after about a minute, he'd singled out the room resonances and compensated for them so that we wouldn't get any howl from feedback with her microphones.

The reason I mention it is because it resonated (no pun intended) with the discussion about XG and Wagner's dismissal of it in a recent press conference, in contrast to Smith's regular references. The reason I say that is because you can break down the process that my sound engineer mate went through in a minute with spectrum analysers, calculations of the size of the room and so on, but ultimately his decades of experience and instinct completely bypassed that; the thought did occur to me that maybe XG is a very valuable tool for the people who aren't so gifted that their subconscious does all the work and then some far more efficiently.

I’m admiring this big time. Anyone who can watch or be involved in any pantomime needs and deserves upmost respect. Saw one decades ago and still have flashbacks. The worst entertainment man has thought of yet. 

[Monty13 2,231]

Don’t think there’s any doubts now.

I still think the squads not quite right in terms of balance but it’s becoming pretty unquestionable that they were massively underperforming under Smith.

[Christoph Stiepermann 1,135]

I stuck with Smith longer than most and I'll admit I was firmly in the players aren't good enough camp. Not so much on ability, more how they work as a team ie compliment each others strengths/mitigate weaknesses etc The team on paper didn't make sense to me. 

But turns out I was wrong, the players were either being stifled or were so unmotivated/lacking on confidence that they were all playing within themselves. Smith's gone and suddenly we look like a top Championship team, the patterns of play are fast, coherent and effective and our attacking players are all linking up so well. 

[OnDaBall 137]

I must admit I wasn't excited by Smith's appointment, but like many I kind of fell in with the opinion that he's probably doing the best with the players he had. I guess the months of mediocre performances ground me down into accepting that. But Wagner has come in with a defined approach to games and the players seem to have instantly bought into it and are enjoying their football again.

[Petriix 2,834]

I think we're seeing that you have to play to your own strengths. Smith seemed determined to shape the players into something they weren't rather than accepting their limitations and adapting around them.

When you've got technical players with great feet and vision, trying to make them play an athletic game, covering ground and battling for the ball was never going to work. It doesn't take a genius to understand that Dowell needs to stay narrow and likes the ball into feet or that Sargent is ineffective when pushed too wide.

Rather than having bad players per se, Smith had players which were never going to excel in his limited tactics. All Wagner has really done is to unleash those attacking players to get forward and bought them a little more space by putting another central attacker up there.

Then he's attempted to cover for the gaps by keeping Kenny behind the ball at all times and generally giving the midfield simple defensive duties. It's far from perfect, but it doesn't have to be because we have enough threat to win most games at this level, even if we ship a few goals from time to time. 

[canarybubbles 1,915]

7 minutes ago, Petriix said:

I think we're seeing that you have to play to your own strengths. Smith seemed determined to shape the players into something they weren't rather than accepting their limitations and adapting around them.

When you've got technical players with great feet and vision, trying to make them play an athletic game, covering ground and battling for the ball was never going to work. It doesn't take a genius to understand that Dowell needs to stay narrow and likes the ball into feet or that Sargent is ineffective when pushed too wide.

Rather than having bad players per se, Smith had players which were never going to excel in his limited tactics. All Wagner has really done is to unleash those attacking players to get forward and bought them a little more space by putting another central attacker up there.

Then he's attempted to cover for the gaps by keeping Kenny behind the ball at all times and generally giving the midfield simple defensive duties. It's far from perfect, but it doesn't have to be because we have enough threat to win most games at this level, even if we ship a few goals from time to time. 

I agree with this, but it's something I find strange because we are led to believe that Smith involved the players in the tactics for each game. And yet surely many of them could not have been happy about being square pegs in round holes and must have wanted to go back to a style which they knew and had generally performed well in.

I suspect we will never know or agree just why Smith was so disastrous for us.

[repman 635]

7 minutes ago, canarybubbles said:

I agree with this, but it's something I find strange because we are led to believe that Smith involved the players in the tactics for each game. And yet surely many of them could not have been happy about being square pegs in round holes and must have wanted to go back to a style which they knew and had generally performed well in.

I suspect we will never know or agree just why Smith was so disastrous for us.

I think this and any idea of Smith's 'style' reflect more an absence of coaching rather than an actual coherent plan. 

[Robert N. LiM 4,329]

1 hour ago, Christoph Stiepermann said:

But turns out I was wrong,

If people said this more often, the internet would be a nicer place.

I was wrong too, by the way. Took me a long time to see Smith's shortcomings.

[Robert N. LiM 4,329]

36 minutes ago, Petriix said:

I think we're seeing that you have to play to your own strengths. Smith seemed determined to shape the players into something they weren't rather than accepting their limitations and adapting around them.

When you've got technical players with great feet and vision, trying to make them play an athletic game, covering ground and battling for the ball was never going to work. It doesn't take a genius to understand that Dowell needs to stay narrow and likes the ball into feet or that Sargent is ineffective when pushed too wide.

Rather than having bad players per se, Smith had players which were never going to excel in his limited tactics. All Wagner has really done is to unleash those attacking players to get forward and bought them a little more space by putting another central attacker up there.

Then he's attempted to cover for the gaps by keeping Kenny behind the ball at all times and generally giving the midfield simple defensive duties. It's far from perfect, but it doesn't have to be because we have enough threat to win most games at this level, even if we ship a few goals from time to time. 

Great post. Nails it. Though we don't need nails now we have a dowell, eh @Disco Dales Jockstrap?

[Indy 3,297]

40 minutes ago, Petriix said:

I think we're seeing that you have to play to your own strengths. Smith seemed determined to shape the players into something they weren't rather than accepting their limitations and adapting around them.

When you've got technical players with great feet and vision, trying to make them play an athletic game, covering ground and battling for the ball was never going to work. It doesn't take a genius to understand that Dowell needs to stay narrow and likes the ball into feet or that Sargent is ineffective when pushed too wide.

Rather than having bad players per se, Smith had players which were never going to excel in his limited tactics. All Wagner has really done is to unleash those attacking players to get forward and bought them a little more space by putting another central attacker up there.

Then he's attempted to cover for the gaps by keeping Kenny behind the ball at all times and generally giving the midfield simple defensive duties. It's far from perfect, but it doesn't have to be because we have enough threat to win most games at this level, even if we ship a few goals from time to time. 

I think you’ve got most points but a big one for me is his training changes to double sessions, his intensity and actually playing players in their natural positions.

But you’re right, the players looked as bored on the pitch as the crowd in the stands, that’s changed, smiles, high energy and a connection all round. Good call by Webber.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,542]

44 minutes ago, Petriix said:

I think we're seeing that you have to play to your own strengths. Smith seemed determined to shape the players into something they weren't rather than accepting their limitations and adapting around them.

When you've got technical players with great feet and vision, trying to make them play an athletic game, covering ground and battling for the ball was never going to work. It doesn't take a genius to understand that Dowell needs to stay narrow and likes the ball into feet or that Sargent is ineffective when pushed too wide.

Rather than having bad players per se, Smith had players which were never going to excel in his limited tactics. All Wagner has really done is to unleash those attacking players to get forward and bought them a little more space by putting another central attacker up there.

Then he's attempted to cover for the gaps by keeping Kenny behind the ball at all times and generally giving the midfield simple defensive duties. It's far from perfect, but it doesn't have to be because we have enough threat to win most games at this level, even if we ship a few goals from time to time. 

Most managers shape squads to fit their own ideas, which is why there's usually transition expected with new managers.

This situation is unique in that Wagner has effectively inherited a squad from Smith built for Farke, another Borussia Dortmund II guy, by Webber, the guy who built the sqaud for Wagner at Huddersfield. There are a lot of reasons why it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that Wagner is hitting the ground running here.

[Creedence Clearwater Couto 1,271]

Are the players (professionals) ok to down tools and not play for a manager? 

The players get away scot-free, but some of the attitudes in the last couple of months of the Smith tenure was awful. Yes, some will say “can you blame them, Smith was awful” etc, etc, but yes, I think, to a degree l, you can. 

Smith is not as incompetent or outright awful, as many make out. There’s more to this upturn in form, other than just David Wagner and new manager bounce.

Anyway, what’s done is done. Sacking Smith was the right decision, and we’ve given ourselves a chance to re-ignite a promotion bid. And it’s feels nice again. 

Edited January 21, 2023 by Creedence Clearwater Couto