"Crippled by fans expectations"

[Getting off the fence 0]

I''ve been listening to a Five Live Football discussion. Much of it was about Sunderland. Mick Dennis (journalist) made the point that there are currently 15 teams in the championship who have been in the Premier League. All of them, he said, feel that they deserve to be in the Premiership and that it is their "rightful home."

He then went on to talk about "my team - Norwich - whose season last year was crippled by the fans unrealistic expectations about what they could achieve."

Views?

[JJ 0]

Mick Dennis makes a valid point but it also depends what the fans ambitions actually were - did every Norwich fan really think we were automatic promotion material?  There were plenty of people before the season started suggesting that the midfield was weak and that we desperately needed a right winger - which proved horribly true.

Realistic ambitions for many last season were the top six and from my point of view i could see by September we were going absolutely nowhere.

And lets not forget - the press and the bookmakers talked us up as champions.  I remember a article in the EEN or EDP last August that had virtually every local sportswriter placing us in the top two.  Just goes to show its not always the fans who put on the pressure.

[Kathy 745]

When you think we had possibly the best goalkeeper, the best centre forward, arguably the best centre half and the best winger, I dont think our expectations were too high. Considerinmg we didnt even make the top six all season, I dont think we did anything other than under achieve.

[Rasputin was a C... 0]

I think its a fair point. The majority of us were still on a high from beating Man Utd and thought "we''ve got more or less the same team now so winning shouldn''t be difficult". When it became apparent that it was going to be much tougher quite a few started questioning the manager and players, myself included. Its just a result of the season in the Prem. Had me not won promotion and finished in and around the playoffs for the last two seasons people would be more accepting of it. Its just we had a taste of what we could achieve and had started to expect wins just to happen in this league. The poor form last season has probably in the long run be a positive thing because we''ve all been brought back down to earth and our expectations are much lower. The team and management feel less pressured and as we''ve seen they''ve been able to play at the sort of level we were expecting last season and hopefully that''ll continue.

[canary cherub 1]

Yes, I''ve heard Mick Dennis on this subject before and I''m not impressed.

The fans'' expectations last season were based on the assumption that the club was fully committed to an immediate return to the Premiership, therefore if things weren''t going to plan it had to be the manager''s fault.  How naive that seems now.

Either Dennis is unaware that the club has been economical with the truth about the financial situation, which in his position is inexcusable, or he chooses not to mention it. 

Is he Doncaster in disguise?

 

[Citizen Journalist Foghorn 0]

somebody else blaming the fans expectations for last season....  lol   ridiculous.  Palace finished Top 6.  Southampton changed more or less their whole playing staff and only finished 4 points behind us.  There was just as much pressure on Dowie at Palace, if not Southampton due to the upheavals the club was in.

I would have been happy with a play-off place, and with Huckerby, Ashton, Shackell, Drury, Green, Safri, Mckenzie and co we had enough to achieve this.

Had the one in charge signed a proper right winger (and don''t mention Marney here as he did not look like a right winger at all) and somebody better than Hughes for the midfield, and perhaps offered Edworthy more than 1 year then we could have easily made the top 6.

[Chip20 69]

I agree that fans'' expectations was a contributing factor, because most of us started knocking the players and staff as soon as it became apparent we weren''t as convincing as we''d thought. There is no way it was the only problem though. A number of our top players just didn''t perform for whatever reason. Shackell never seemed to recover from his pre-season mumps and unpleasant injury, Safri was out of sorts, with international commitments causing further problems, and Ashton never looked committed enough to score the goals we all expected. Even Hucks didn''t generally deliver the kind of performances we''d seen the last time he was in this division and, again, we can only speculate as to why (was it the supposed glandular fever or something else?). I''ve said it half a dozen times before, but I really believe a sportsman''s performance is based on confidence and we fans just didn''t transmit the right vibes to breed confidence last season, almost from the first game. Of course, there were dozens of other factors beyond confidence and underperforming ''stars'' (not least the one-dimensional approach of trying to play everything through the ineffectual Hucks).

Don''t get me wrong; I''m not blaming the fans for the dire season. After all, it''s up to the team on the pitch to give us something to cheer about.

[Hardhouse44 261]

Well if that guff is the truth then don''t forget to add the name of all the pundits and every bookie in the country too. What a load of rubbish spoken by someone who is no more qualified to talk about our team than an Ipswich fan. People have expectation that’s life without them what’s the point of going to the bloody games in the first place. Our expectation were based on the fact we had top players and we were told we had brought in other good players. The latter turned out to be rubbish but you can''t get away from the fact we had players in key positions that were the best the league had to offer. I expect us to win tomorrow do you think the players can take it!!! What utter rubbish!!!

[Getting off the fence 0]

I think that you talk a lot of sense Lincoln Canary. Obviously there are other factors - underperformance being one - but confidence has a massive impact upon performance and the crowd can contribute to this - both negatively and positively. I would be the first to accept that Hughes has not "shone" as a player, but it can''t help when you are consistently bood. Thank goodness, we have made a decent start to the season becuase Etuhu would probably have been the next.

You can''t blame the fans - I too thought a team containing Hucks, Ashton, Green etc would have too much for most teams - but I am sure the disappointment transmitted itself to the players.

[ca 1]

We had the players we just under achieved.

Have to agree with CJF that had we signed a right winger, got another decent midfielder to play along Safri and not persisted with playing players out of position so often we would have easily made the top 6.

Went to Colney today to watch the training,really enjoyed it plus looking at all the posh cars in the car park!!

[jetstream 0]

"What a load of rubbish spoken by someone who is no more qualified to talk about our team than an Ipswich fan"

er...I may not agree with all his opinions but he is, I believe, a season ticket holder and has been a fan for donkey''s years.

[JJ 0]

Certainly the fans played a part although the vitriol didn''t really manifest fully at Carrow Road until February.  By the time Hughes (and to a lesser extent Etuhu) were getting slaughtered, the season was dead in the water anyway.  Until Feb/March time the feeling was more lacklustre, if anything a hangover that existed from the moment we kicked off against Coventry in August.

It just annoys me when people in the press come out and soley blame the fans when in fact it is the media who hype the team up in the first place to sell papers.  I''ve always had a lot of time for Mick Dennis cause he has always stuck up for us in the national press but I wonder was his prediction was at the beginning of last season?

[Ramrod 258]

What a load of utter tripe.

Supporters were entitled to their expectations, why should our highly paid squad not feel under pressure to deliver.

Anything else denigrates us as a Club.

[John Boubepo 0]

Don''t all football fans have high expectations at the begining of every season? I bet 90% of Ipswich fans were expecting a playoff position themselves two weeks ago, that''s football! but even by our own standards last season was as dire as it could possibly get, however high or low you based your expectations!

[Yellow Rages 0]

[quote user="John Boubepo"]Don''t all football fans have high expectations at the begining of every season? I bet 90% of Ipswich fans were expecting a playoff position themselves two weeks ago, that''s football! but even by our own standards last season was as dire as it could possibly get, however high or low you based your expectations!
[/quote]

CRIPPLED BY THE FANS ?

I''m not so sure about that. I don''t see a club crippled by the fans in front of me do you?

I see a club that bought unwisely and underestimated the task in hand.

The expectation of those fans was to return to top flight football but by expecting this they certainly didn''t cripple the club. If anything, they raised awareness of what the level of expectation was.

[Getting off the fence 0]

Other team could ahve looked at thier squads and said that with the qaulity they had, they should be automatics for promotion - Palace could argue that they had a string of premiership quality players, for example, including a striker who featured in England squads.

Nobody is suggesting that we did not under-achieve, merely that pressure from fans can make things worse. Adam Drury said yesterday for example,

“Last year when you had people on your backs people, you tend not to want the ball and not want to play and take the easy option, so at the minute it is good because everyone wants to play and get on the ball because everyone''s confident.”

Fans understandably want thier teams to do well, sometimes their anxiety transports itself to the pitch and makes things worse and results in players playing less well than they could.

[Yellow Rages 0]

I can understand that GOTF.

 

 

[Ramrod 258]

That''s nonsense GOTF by the time supporters were getting on players backs they had already screwed up the season over several months by playing like a group of strangers and feeling sorry for themselves after relegation.

[Getting off the fence 0]

The pay offs were still a possibility.