A Hill you would die on. Norwich City

[The Real Buh 3,444]

I was right about Dean Smith from the very start and all those that backed him for so long are still seething about it.

[GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary 1,770]

Should have kept John Fashanu and sold Rosario in the early 80s

Fleck and Fashanu wouldve won us the double in 88/89....

[Nexus_Canary 1,020]

Firing Daniel Farke.

[alex_ncfc 662]

That Worthy should have been sacked after the 6-0 Fulham debacle. We had a great chance to stay up and he blew it.

Also the extremely poor start to the following season in the Championship for the first few months should have seen him sacked, it was a poor season by our standards with the squad we had. A decent manager would have seen us easily bounce back.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,551]

16 hours ago, Monty13 said:

Bit like you and Dean Smith

Meh. Last year we started very well and went downhill on the back of injuries so sacked him. This year, his successor did less well at the start of the season, sunk a lot lower from injuries, but has turned it around so we're in the playoff places having been afforded a lot more leeway than Smith was, mostly I suspect because having made such a fuss to get rid of Smith, seeing his successor fail makes them look especially stupid for being so adamantly anti Smith. As such, I still think there's a good chance we'd have already made it back to the Premier League after we'd come through the injuries last year if some people hadn't got so stupid about cups of tea and the like and just decided it was a personal mission to get the guy sacked for reasons only known to themselves. That vendetta made last season a complete waste.

Any time you want to raise it, happy to go there. You all know I'm right, even though your egos won't let you admit it.

Edited March 11 by littleyellowbirdie

[NFN FC 1,123]

6 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Meh. Last year we started very well and went downhill on the back of injuries so sacked him. This year, his successor did less well at the start of the season, sunk a lot lower from injuries, but has turned it around so we're in the playoff places having been afforded a lot more leeway than Smith was, mostly I suspect because having made such a fuss to get rid of Smith, seeing his successor fail makes them look especially stupid for being so adamantly anti Smith. As such, I still think there's a good chance we'd have already made it back to the Premier League after we'd come through the injuries last year if some people hadn't got so stupid about cups of tea and the like and just decided it was a personal mission to get the guy sacked for reasons only known to themselves. That vendetta made last season a complete waste.

Any time you want to raise it, happy to go there. You all know I'm right, even though your egos won't let you admit it.

You are Dean Smith's mug and I claim my £5

[Taylor324 36]

Sacking Daniel Farke was a pivotal moment and if shooting ourselves in both feet wasn't already bad enough, I don't think we have what it takes to beat Leeds, should we meet him in the play offs

[Yobocop 1,099]

On 09/03/2024 at 10:15, Ulfotto said:

What are your Norwich city opinions or views you would die on and can’t be swayed on regardless of reason or logic.

My current one is that the board inaction in this January transfer window has potentially cost us our best chance of promotion for years to come.

From years gone by that Paul McVeigh was as important as Darren Huckerby.

Point 1 - we’re 6th albeit with some tough opposition to come IF we make the playoffs, next season, at least 2/3 relegated teams will struggle which will open up the space. 

point 2 - interesting, mcveigh never really did it for us in the sense that he alone wouldn’t have got us to premier league, he did obviously come back and have an impact when we got out of league one so maybe you have a point

mine: had we signed Windass, o’neill would’ve stayed and we would now be an established Premier League side 

[Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB 1,024]

On 09/03/2024 at 12:54, Ulfotto said:

Nearly 400 games for the club barely a memorable moment within them. Then one chance one opportunity and he missed. Probably the most. Norwich thing of all time.

That and the fact that up until that game no team that used the changing room we used had lost a play off final at Cardiff (ACN)............

[Bobzilla 145]

On 09/03/2024 at 22:33, East Rider said:

Had we replaced Brian Gunn the season we were relegated in 94/95, we would have a: stayed up and b: been the receivers of the extra money handed to all teams the following year due to the tv deal and as a result it would have changed our history going forward.

That was the moment 

That’s a hill I’d die on.  More specifically, the £1m that Wednesday were offering Chris Woods to us for was peanuts compared to what we would have got as a result of it.  Marshall was a quality keeper, but too young and inexperienced to be an every week keeper for the Prem.  And Simon Tracey was not only not the answer, but also wasn’t used for anything other than backup for Marshall.  And if Marshall wasn’t good enough at that point, Tracey was nowhere near.

[Bobzilla 145]

On 10/03/2024 at 17:40, The Real Buh said:

I was right about Dean Smith from the very start and all those that backed him for so long are still seething about it.

That wasn’t a particularly difficult call.  I don’t understand how so many crap premier league managers are managers that have been crap at other premier league teams.  It’s almost like the ‘I was there’ factor is more important than what you actually achieved there.  I swear that Mourinho has made more money being sacked by Premier League teams than he ever did actually managing them…

[Bobzilla 145]

17 hours ago, alex_ncfc said:

That Worthy should have been sacked after the 6-0 Fulham debacle. We had a great chance to stay up and he blew it.

‘He’ didn’t.  Our team did.  Our team didn’t believe that we could stay up, so half the team went missing in that match.  There were some very influential players who were looking for moves and so didn’t want to get injured.  And played like it.  And we got hammered 6-0.  That’s not on Worthy.  That’s on the likes of Francis and Bentley (who admittedly was a loan player so wasn’t paid to care).

[Mr Angry 1,563]

6 hours ago, Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB said:

That and the fact that up until that game no team that used the changing room we used had lost a play off final at Cardiff (ACN)............

Not true-Brentford had lost to Stoke in 2002. This was 2 months after a Feng Shui expert had been called in to try to end the jinx.

[alex_ncfc 662]

1 hour ago, Bobzilla said:

‘He’ didn’t.  Our team did.  Our team didn’t believe that we could stay up, so half the team went missing in that match.  There were some very influential players who were looking for moves and so didn’t want to get injured.  And played like it.  And we got hammered 6-0.  That’s not on Worthy.  That’s on the likes of Francis and Bentley (who admittedly was a loan player so wasn’t paid to care).

He absolutely did. If you start the final day of the season out of the bottom 3, with your fate in your own hands and you can't even get your team up and ready to fight and battle to get their first away win of the season, then you've blown it - that was his job. What the hell was his team talk that day and in the days leading up to the game? We showed nothing, and it was a total humiliation. 

[Ulfotto 637]

1 minute ago, alex_ncfc said:

He absolutely did. If you start the final day of the season out of the bottom 3, with your fate in your own hands and you can't even get your team up and ready to fight and battle to get their first away win of the season, then you've blown it - that was his job. What the hell was his team talk that day and in the days leading up to the game? We showed nothing, and it was a total humiliation. 

I think Steve Foley had a heart attack just before kick off which probably didn’t help the vibes and as it turned out we only needed a draw. 
 

The correct hill for that season would be if we had signed Dean Ashton at the start of the season we would have stayed up relatively comfortably.

[NewNestCarrow 193]

On 09/03/2024 at 12:19, mccanary said:

Bringing Daryl Sutch on in the play off final cost us the game and promotion at Cardiff 2002.

Even though he wasn't the first City player to miss in the penalty shoot-out?

 

[NewNestCarrow 193]

On 09/03/2024 at 12:54, Ulfotto said:

Nearly 400 games for the club barely a memorable moment within them. Then one chance one opportunity and he missed. Probably the most. Norwich thing of all time.

Scoring the winner at Villa Park in Nov 1992, sending us five points clear at the top?

[alex_ncfc 662]

7 minutes ago, NewNestCarrow said:

Even though he wasn't the first City player to miss in the penalty shoot-out?

 

I don't think it was necessarily because of the penalty he missed, but the defensive shape we took once he came on and inviting pressure. I forget who he came on for, was it McVeigh? 

What I do know is that he never played for us again after that. 

[alex_ncfc 662]

12 minutes ago, Ulfotto said:

I think Steve Foley had a heart attack just before kick off which probably didn’t help the vibes and as it turned out we only needed a draw. 
 

The correct hill for that season would be if we had signed Dean Ashton at the start of the season we would have stayed up relatively comfortably.

Did we only need a draw? That makes it even worse.

Never heard about the Steve Foley story before, I thought that was the season after in the Championship. The story I remember around that time was that there was a massive bust-up between the players on the coach on the way down to London, but even if that's the case, the manager should have been able to get us to at least show a bit of fight on the pitch, there was nothing but a complete capitulation. 

As for the Ashton point, yes I agree. A huge missed opportunity by our penny-pinching board, £3M was peanuts even then. 

[NewNestCarrow 193]

10 minutes ago, alex_ncfc said:

I don't think it was necessarily because of the penalty he missed, but the defensive shape we took once he came on and inviting pressure. I forget who he came on for, was it McVeigh? 

What I do know is that he never played for us again after that. 

Worthy took off McVeigh & replaced him with Sutch.

Unless Sutch instructed Worthy to make the switch (and the tactic to keep things tight), I can't really see how he is to blame.

Identical defence-for-attack subs were made in the away leg at Molineux, and they clearly worked.

[Ulfotto 637]

1 hour ago, NewNestCarrow said:

Scoring the winner at Villa Park in Nov 1992, sending us five points clear at the top?

There was a ten year period between that and the penalty miss…..

[mccanary 84]

1 hour ago, NewNestCarrow said:

Even though he wasn't the first City player to miss in the penalty shoot-out?

 

He wasn't half the player McVeigh was. Not his fault so maybe I should have mentioned Nigel as well !

[Besthorpe-48 102]

Top of king Street on the way back to county hall car park given the speed my son travels at.

[NewNestCarrow 193]

9 minutes ago, Ulfotto said:

There was a ten year period between that and the penalty miss…..

"barely a memorable moment" is how you described his Norwich career.

Played over an hour in the win @ B Munich, and in the home leg.

Also the first away player to score the winning goal at Sunderland's Stadium of Light.

[Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB 1,024]

2 hours ago, Mr Angry said:

Not true-Brentford had lost to Stoke in 2002. This was 2 months after a Feng Shui expert had been called in to try to end the jinx.

My bad, just read up on it, the Feng Shui did not work though because Cambridge got beaten 4-1 by Blackpool. Interestingly the Stoke manager whilst being dismissive of the jinx made sure his team stayed at a hotel that had only been used by winning teams............

[TheRock 171]

The best point that I could suggest for this topic is that if we were not banned from Europe in the 80's after Heysel, our club would have probably would have had the extra quality in our squad to win those competitions in the 90's, as we would have attracted much better players and a bigger following.

I recall hearing on Talksport a few years ago, Adrian Heath was on as a guest, he said that the three bigest losers by far as a result of the Heysel ruling to ban English Clubs were Everton, Norwich and Nottingham Forest, who could have had very different fortunes if they allowed into the European Competitions in the late 80's. All three clubs of course fell off in the mid 90's.

Edited March 12 by TheRock

[Europe_93 11]

Liverpool owe us 3 European Tours.

The fact that Everton are the unusable turd of the premier league shows how unfair football is when you consider how their lack of application cost us in 85

[Bobzilla 145]

On 11/03/2024 at 19:20, alex_ncfc said:

He absolutely did. If you start the final day of the season out of the bottom 3, with your fate in your own hands and you can't even get your team up and ready to fight and battle to get their first away win of the season, then you've blown it - that was his job. What the hell was his team talk that day and in the days leading up to the game? We showed nothing, and it was a total humiliation. 

Tell me you know nothing about man management without…

NO manager can motivate players, or even staff in general, that want away.  Trust me, I know - I’ve been that person.  The chief concern for a number of our key players that day was to not get injured.  Worthy could have been God almighty that day, and his key players still wouldn’t have given their all because they knew that their careers lay elsewhere.  Francis got out, Ashton forced his way out the following January.  

How many clubs have managed to climb out of the relegation zone on the final day?  It just doesn’t happen because the bigger players know the odds are against them and just don’t want to get injured.

[TheGunnShow 5,940]

As much as I was one of the Farke loyalists, my hill would be that we'd need Sam Allardyce or Sean Dyche as our manager if we were to get promoted now.

[Bobzilla 145]

Sean Dyche I could do.  Sam Allardyce can do one.  You’ll be suggesting Neil Warnock next…