Wasted opportunity

[cliffoa 0]

 

 

On Sky Sports News last night I heard the reporter say, ‘Norwich 5, Barnet 2, a strong performance from Norwich there’, and I thought, he must have been watching the Everton game.  I never thought I’d go to a game where my team scored five goals, yet at the end I’d feel like asking for half my money back.  

 

I’m still trying to work out how we managed to snatch frustration from the jaws of exhilaration, and turn what should have been a night of positives into a negative.

 

Here was a chance to put Norwich City all over the back pages by running up a scoreline that would have gone down in the history books.  It would have really put Norwich on the map, left the dressing room on a massive high and the fans feeling ten feet tall.

 

Whatever Grant said to the team at half time, or during the short break at 5-0, something flicked a switch in the heads of the players, turning our game from a masterclass of counter-attacking football into a clueless, shambolic excuse for a pub team.  

 

No wonder Peter Grant got stuck into the players after the game. Words fail to do justice to how bad we were for the last 60 minutes. We made Andy Hughes seem like Pele.  Though one has to wonder whether Grant’s half-time emphasis on ‘keeping a clean’ sheet, helped send them back into their shells.

 

To be fair to Barnet, they never let their heads drop.  They kept at it for 90 minutes and thoroughly deserved their two goals, having played us off the park for long spells of the match, and completely dominated the second half.   

 

Yet even in those breath-taking first 30 minutes when we had to keep pinching ourselves at the scoreline, Norwich weren’t exactly dominating the game. In fact at times we looked positively shaky. Barnet took the game to us, and could have scored a brace of goals themselves.

 

At 5-0 they must have been thinking, ‘how did we deserve that?’ 

 

The scoreline flattered us, and we were made to look better than we were by their awful defence.  Which made it all the more inexcusable that for the remaining 60 minutes, we didn’t even try to put their back four under pressure. After 30 minutes their defence was there for the taking. So did we pile on the pressure? No, we went for a clean sheet, and the Barnet defence might as well have gone down the pub in the 2^nd half.

 

Every football fan in the country knows that the best form of defence is attack.  When Norwich are going at teams, we are difficult to live with.  Yet there seems to be a mentality that as soon as we get in front, we go into our shell and try to shut up shop. This hands momentum back to the opposition, gives them fresh heart, puts them on the front foot and us on the back foot, with the inevitable result that sooner or later we concede goals. How many times have we seen hit happen?

 

Why is it that when teams are playing a style of attacking football that has put them in front, they think the best way to finish off a team is to stop attacking and start playing a completely different, negative style of fooball?  

 

If you are playing in the other team’s half, it’s pretty difficult for them to score.  But if you stop doing that and let them play in your half, and every time you get the ball you boot it back to them, you don’t need to be Einstein to work out you’re going to concede more goals than you score. 

 

Whatever they put into the heads of Brazilians when they are born, I wish they could bottle it up and sell it over here. You never see the Brazilians play with fear or try to close out games. Two goals up, they go for the third. Five goals up, they go for the sixth. Even if they do concede goals, so what? They’d rather win 7-3 than 1-0. It’s no coincidence they’re the most successful, attractive football nation in the history of the game.

 

Football matches are won and lost on the pitch, and in players’ heads.  Whatever Peter Grant is saying to the current squad of players, either his tactics are flawed or the players are not following instructions, and he needs to do something about it.

 

I am convinced he is a manager who has what it takes, one of the best we’ve had in years. I like the way he talks, the style of football he says he is striving for, and the ambition he has for our football club. But talk is cheap, and if the players he buys and picks week in week out continue to turn in the sort of rubbish I witnessed last night... well, you know the rest. And yes, I know we won 5-2, though to say it was against the run of play wouldn''t exactly be an unfair description.  Grant has put on record that winning alone is not enough, that he wants the team playing the traditional norwich style of flowing offensive football the fans here demand.  amen to that.

 

Solutions?

1. Docherty needs some serious competition at centre back, obviously, to sharpen him up again.

2. Hopefully, when Brelier and Hucks and the chelsea boy Smith are fit, we’ll have a much stronger midfield, and we won’t see much more of fotheringham.

3. Put Fotheringham in the subs and only put him on the bench in an injury crisis.  He reminds me of Jim Brennan, forever hiding, playing nothing passes, giving the ball away. Okay, he scored against Barnet, but Robert Green could have scored against Barnet. Can anyone remember him kicking the ball in the whole of the second half? He just goes missing. It''s like a big black hole in the midfield, which could be filled by a player who makes a real difference.  Now I know how spurs fans feel about jenas.

4. Get some serious kicking lessons for David Marshall, before Championship teams realise it’s his achilles and make us pay. I think he’s a better all round goalie than greeno, so hopefully if he can iron out this one flaw he’ll be the absolute dogs, and will save us 20 points a season.

 

That’s about it really.  Come on you yellows.

[Canary Pirate 0]

This post is so long I don''t know where to start and where to finish, so I''ll just say Norwich are in the next round, Ipswich are''nt !

[One Flew Over... 33]

The last time we scored 5 at Carrow Road was against Walsall (17-04-2004 - and OK we kept a clean sheet), but it''s hardly an opportunity wasted - we won and got 5 goals!

Agree with all your points on improvements, but that was a game where if we weren''t so clinical first half we could have been embarassed like several of our fellow Championship teams.

[OTBC 0]

Sorry to be pedantic, but we scored 5 against Barnsley last season.

[Grando 260]

If people are disappointed in the 5-2 result they should think back to the cup games against lower league opposition under Worthy - invarialbly tedious displays which resulted, at best, in scraping 1-0 victories (and usually not that)...

[Essex_Canary 6]

Can''t believe that anyone can slag off Marshall for his kicking, I take it you missed the fact that he picked up a nasty looking knock when one of their players landed on him from a corner at the end of the first half, he was hobbling around a bit so I guess it was nothing more than a dead leg, however it goes a long way to explain his kicking for about a half hour period and also explains why he took the short option to Semi, Drury or Shacks whenever possible.