Brilliant outsider's view on our plight....

[Mr Brownstone 0]

[quote user="GJP"]

[quote user="Snakepit boys"]I would suggest that our goals conceded over the past few seasons suggests that the defence are in fact all awful. I would also suggest that it is why we cannot win away (We cannott absorb pressure without conceding and nick results) This was so in the prem season as we failed to win away all year. So yes I will stick by the fact that the Doc cannott defend however add the word properly!

Now Dublin a striker turned defender in his later years was totally different gravy. His football brain over the rest of our players on the park stood out a mile even in the twilight of his career. We have had no clever players with a football brain for a long while. Croft is a headless chicken with no end product or potential to have one. Football brains are born not coached it is called awareness and vision in footballing terms.

I happen to disagree with you totally.
[/quote]

As some the couple of old chaps sittin near me at Saturday said "the Doc don''t miss a lot, do he?"

They know it. I know it. How come you don''t?

He''s a good defender.

And in this league Lee Croft is a pretty good winger, his crossing is decent, his work rate is superb and he''s scored a few goals this season.

Or do you think we''re going to sign Cristiano Ronaldo? Get a grip.

[/quote]

After you comment about the Doc, I thought you might be on a wind up. Now I''m sure of it!

[Bury Yellow 2]

As you say GJP it''s all a matter of opinion but i think I''m right of course when i say Doc ''aint good and Crofty hasn''t got a finished product.

Both players give their all for the club but meanwhile we sink into the mire. Not all their fault of course but they are as good as example as any as to why we can smell something nasty.

For the real problem we must look to our illustrious leaders.

I''m ashamed to say I am nearly broken now and cannot face going to QPR tonight. I''ve missed very few games over the last few years.

[E I E I E I O 0]

[quote user="GJP"]

[quote user="Snakepit boys"]I would suggest that our goals conceded over the past few seasons suggests that the defence are in fact all awful. I would also suggest that it is why we cannot win away (We cannott absorb pressure without conceding and nick results) This was so in the prem season as we failed to win away all year. So yes I will stick by the fact that the Doc cannott defend however add the word properly! Now Dublin a striker turned defender in his later years was totally different gravy. His football brain over the rest of our players on the park stood out a mile even in the twilight of his career. We have had no clever players with a football brain for a long while. Croft is a headless chicken with no end product or potential to have one. Football brains are born not coached it is called awareness and vision in footballing terms.I happen to disagree with you totally. [/quote]

As some the couple of old chaps sittin near me at Saturday said "the Doc don''t miss a lot, do he?"

They know it. I know it. How come you don''t?

He''s a good defender.

And in this league Lee Croft is a pretty good winger, his crossing is decent, his work rate is superb and he''s scored a few goals this season.

Or do you think we''re going to sign Cristiano Ronaldo? Get a grip.

[/quote]In answer to these 2 points, he only has headers to deal with. This is due to the fact we sit so deep because of his turning circle and lack of pace. Do you actually watch where he heads it though? This is where he is poor just watch how many times he clears the ball from danger or even better finds a yellow shirt? It is pretty poor!I will not even respond to the croft is a decent crosser. Christ even Roeder had said they had worked on it? What were the coaches seeing as a child? Why has it took this long to realise you cant teach a player to spot a clever run and pick him out on a sixpence. That is a born ability!!

[Rustys 1st Touch 0]

"The Doc don''t miss a lot, do he?". Thats the basis of your argument. Cast your mind back to last season when Martin Taylor played in defence, he put Doherty to same.

Won ever header and was positionally aware. That was a proper Championship defender and our results at that time reflected that. He wasn''t the quickest but he was far more reliable than the Doc has been in his four or five years at the club.

[Sing up the river end 0]

[quote user="Snakepit boys"]Cheers Sing up the River end for once ya eejut! I see you have changed your avatar from the Prawn sandwich with the no entry sign? [;)]Are you on messenger later for the game commentary?[/quote]yeah

[GJP 79]

[quote user="Lupo Loop"]

"The Doc don''t miss a lot, do he?". Thats the basis of your argument. Cast your mind back to last season when Martin Taylor played in defence, he put Doherty to same.

Won ever header and was positionally aware. That was a proper Championship defender and our results at that time reflected that. He wasn''t the quickest but he was far more reliable than the Doc has been in his four or five years at the club.

[/quote]

It''s not the basis of the argument as such but you seem to have missed the meaning of it.

Now, don''t get me wrong, I''m a big fan of Martin Taylor and wish we had him here now. Was he that much better than the Doc? Probably not in all honesty. He was rusty to begin with and only after a run of games did he start to look the business.

What we''ve needed for ages is two good strong central defenders and we''d have that with Tiny and the Doc.

The Doc wins pretty much everything in the air, reads the game well, rarely gets caught out of position and doesn''t get beaten for pace much either. The only real weakness to his game is that he''s slow on the turn.

I think most people who watch Norwich regularly know that the Doc defends well.

[lucky green trainers 0]

the qpr outsiders view of naaarwich is bang on the money - and not dissimilar to what many of us have been saying on this msg board for a long time now...

[0ridgemanddMMyyyy0Falseen-USTrue 0]

Its seems frightening that a QPR supporter can see the problems that our management and board can''t see.

[Rustys 1st Touch 0]

I agree we have been lacking a good central defensive partnership this season and that the Doc has been our best performing defender this season. I think the injury to Stefanovic earlier in the season was the turning point of the season.

He was a cool head who would have complimented some of Doherty''s qualities and covered for his deficiencies.

Unfortunately we haven''t been able to sign any one to replace Stefanovic''s qualities since his injury I guess thats another story!

 

[canary cherub 1]

[quote user="lucky green trainers"]the qpr outsiders view of naaarwich is bang on the money - and not dissimilar to what many of us have been saying on this msg board for a long time now...

[/quote]

I agree - it chronicles the whole drawn out saga.  How many times problems have been compounded and opportunities to stem the decline ignored!  

Now we''re in organisational meltdown.  Like the bathwater gradually approaching the plughole we have reached the edge and are now circling in a vain attempt to defy gravity before we disappear down the tube.

It didn''t have to happen.

 

[Taxing 0]

Deserves to be bumped. I just read it a second time and, with last night''s win at QPR under our belts, I enjoyed it more than I did yesterday !

While tonight is make or break to QPR in the eyes of only a handful of people it is vitally important to Norwich and the Canaries will be desperately hoping that QPR do what they usually do in these circumstances and roll over charitably and die.

Five minutes on Norwich
Norwich City are in big, big trouble. With the Championship increasingly a graveyard for failed Premiership clubs (seventeen former members at the last count) it is inevitable that one or two of them will start to slip even lower still and with Leicester and Leeds currently enjoying the delights of midweek trips to Hartlepool there is a distinct possibility that three more teams that recently graced the top flight could be joining them come May. Charlton are all but doomed, Southampton are showing signs of life but it may be too late and Norwich, well like I say Norwich are in big trouble.

City have struggled since relegation from the Premiership in 2005 largely due, in my opinion as an outsider looking in, to poor managerial appointments made by the board and even worse decisions made by those managers. Norwich should have stayed in the Premiership. They bought well in the January transfer window and started picking up impressive results at Carrow Road, Man Utd were vanquished 2-0 for example, but they failed to win a single away game all season culminating in a final day 6-0 defeat at Fulham of all places. If you could pick a game for the last day of the Premiership season with you needing to win Fulham would be fairly near the top of the list I would suggest, especially so back then in their pre-Roy Hodgson days.

Nevertheless Nigel Worthington probably deserved a chance to take them back to the top flight at the first time of asking having got them there in the first place. Norwich never looked like doing so. The Canaries rarely threatened the play offs and by the time Gary Waddock’s QPR side arrived there in April there were petitions outside the ground calling for Worthington to be sacked. QPR did their bit, blowing a two goal lead to lose and keep the silver fox in the dug out for another week at least. That was a bizarre match not only for QPR’s kamikaze defending but also because a large portion of the home crowd was actually as disappointed as we were. To lose and lose comfortably at home to a side as bad as QPR were at the time, as looked likely for seventy eight minutes of the game, would surely have been a blow too far for Worthington and the reception for a thrilling come back win for the home side was somewhat less vociferous then you may have expected.

That result contributed to Worthington being allowed another summer of squad dismantling and the first ten games or so of the following season. Disaster. With decline now terminally setting in Norwich bummed him off after an embarrassing televised thrashing by Burnley at Carrow Road and having delayed that decision too long they then made the cataclysmically bad call of making former midfielder Peter Grant, he of snapping Paul Murray’s leg infamy, the new boss – his first ever managerial job. Fast forward twelve months Norwich were back at Loftus Road – insipid, lifeless, disorganised, lacking ability and application, as wet as an otter’s pocket. They lost to QPR, the first team to do so after twelve matches of the 2007/08 season, and sunk to the bottom of the table as a result. Grant was shown the door.

Once again faced with the possibility of relegation and needing to appoint a manager to take charge of a squad put together by somebody else and still some two months short of another transfer window Norwich turned to former QPR centre half Glenn Roeder. A terrific player and superb academy director at Newcastle Roeder has nevertheless proved himself to be a wholly inadequate manager several times. He was poor at Gillingham, worse at Watford, relegated a West Ham team that had Joe Cole, Jermaine Defoe and Paulo Di Canio in it, became the latest in a long line of managers to do sweet FA with Newcastle United and then got another crack at Norwich City.

He did well to keep them up last season, safety secured with a thumping 3-0 win over a typically farcical QPR side in April, but the success was achieved largely because Roeder was able to loan in several Premiership youngsters he knew from his time with the Newcastle academy. When the likes of Ched Evans headed back to their parent clubs last summer without adequate replacement a struggle was always on the cards and sure enough Norwich have been in and around the bottom three all season.

They are a poor team, you have to be to lose at home to a ten man QPR side - a product of five years of piss poor management by a succession of clueless gaffers. Roeder was sacked after they unforgivably lost at home to an even bigger heap of mismanaged stinky stuff Charlton Athletic but rather than point at the state of the team and results for the decision Chief Executive Neil Doncaster blamed Roeder’s attitude towards fans saying he was “arrogant, rude and dismissive” when talking to supporters and any potential replacement would need to understand, and I cannot quite believe I’m typing this, “the Norfolk way”. God only knows what the hell that is, although one suspects tractors will be involved somewhere along the line, but I would think some tactical nouse and motivational ability may be slightly more important in a deepening crisis than being nice to supporters and knowing what the chuffing ‘Norfolk way’ is when it is at home. Incredibly there was even a story at the time of Roeder’s dismissal that Norwich had asked permission to speak to (you might want to swallow any hot drinks you may be dealing with before reading on) Nigel bloody Worthington again. You couldn’t make this up.

Norwich have subsequently appointed one of their club legends and easily one of the nicest and most likeable men in football as their new gaffer. Bryan Gunn has done everything in Norwich from keep goal and run the club’s lottery to being the town’s Sheriff (seriously what kind of town still has a Sheriff? Maybe the ‘Norfolk Way’ means not moving out of the seventeenth century?) but to throw him into these choppy waters with this group of players at his disposal and asking for a miracle is tantamount to cruelty. Norwich have won only one of eight games since Gunn took over and now sit four points adrift in the relegation zone with only eleven games left to do something about it.

I still think they will probably get out of it, and we’re highly likely to treat them to some points on Tuesday night in the time honoured fashion, but really you’d be a foolish man to stake much money on it. With Bryan Gunn in charge they will get the neutral vote because it is impossible not to like him and wish him well but I’m not sure Arsene Wenger could do a great deal with this squad of players.

Still, before you feel too sorry for them remember our old mate Mick Dennis is a staunch Norwich fan. You may recognise him tomorrow, he’ll be the one twittering on about the lack of hot drinks at Loftus Road a decade ago and the wonderful work Norwich do in their community while his team stares League One in the face. Fiddling while Rome burns, and he’s not the only one at Carrow Road guilty of that.

Men to watch
Like somebody buying a twenty five year old mustard coloured Mini Metro (they’ve re-badged it you fool) for two hundred quid hoping to use it as a means of getting to and from work with some degree of reliability Norwich have been left to scrape the barrel as their situation has worsened. Last season they turned to John Hartson who struggled to fit into a pair of City’s shorts and subsequently gave up altogether because, and if there has ever been a more disgraceful reason given for throwing the towel in as a professional footballer then I haven’t heard it, "I have been fighting my weight for twelve years. I can''t have a burger without putting on half a stone."

This year’s project-doomed-to-failure is the resurrection of Carl Cort’s career that had drifted into some strange form of premature retirement after a failed spell with Leicester City last season. Cort is injured again this week, I know I know shocking isn’t it, but should he manage to recover in time for our game then stick a tenner on him to score first because, well, he always does against us. Cort scored 32 times in three years at Wolves and six of those came against QPR – in just five matches.

Cort was partnered in attack at the weekend by our own former charge Jamie Cureton whose career is starting to wind down now. Cureton had a terrific goal scoring record at Bristol Rovers and Reading before joining QPR but coming back from a difficult spell in Korea he never settled into the Holloway style of play at Loftus Road and only managed six goals in his time with us – four of them against Coventry. Cureton enjoyed a terrific season at Colchester United in 2006/07 and got a move back to his first club Norwich as a result but earlier this season Roeder had him out on loan at Barnsley and only the appointment of Bryan Gunn has seen him given a second chance.

Gunn has Scotsman Alan Gow on loan from Rangers at his disposal as well – Gow impressed during the first half of this season on loan at Blackpool but failed a medical when Wolves had an offer accepted for him in January. He then joined Norwich on loan where presumably you don’t need a medical and he has made one start and two sub appearances so far.

Further back the ammunition for these forwards is provided by Lee Croft on one side and Wes Hoolahan on the other. Croft can at best be described as ‘portly’, at worst a fat git, but the former Man City man is a decent bet for the Player of the Year award in this part of the world apparently so he must be playing well. Hoolahan was a summer signing from Blackpool, pinched under the same cut price deal that we got Kaspars Gorkss on, but Hoolahan hasn’t been nearly as successful at his new club as the big Latvian has at Loftus Road. Still, like Cureton, the departure of Roeder seems to have breathed new life into the diminutive attacking midfielder and he scored two good goals in Gunn’s first two matches in charge against Barnsley and Southampton.

Hoolahan was much sought after in the summer, as was Northern Ireland midfielder Sammy Clingan who joined on a free from Nottingham Forest. Norwich, with their fan base and history, do still have pulling power and in Hoolahan, Clingan and Cureton have nailed the signings of some of the hottest properties n the football league over the past two years but all to no avail.

The further back you go in this team the easier it is to see why they are struggling. Yes, that’s right, Gary Doherty is still playing at centre half. I remember writing about how poor he was for this website two whole years ago and he certainly has not improved with age. Painfully slow with he turning circle of an articulated lorry he is one of the worst centre backs in this league and an obvious weakness for QPR to attempt to exploit.

Jonathan Grounds, on loan from Middlesbrough, has three goals in his last six games despite being a defender and full back Jon Otsemober was a transfer target for Ian Holloway and QPR during his time at Crewe. Scottish goalkeeper David Marshall has played well against us in the past.

[kennyfoggo 0]

You really need to read what this QPeeR site had to say.  Clearly they nothing that isn''t stuck to their noses.Rangers lose again after increasing ticket pricesBy Chris Mendes   Tuesday, 3rd March 2009Disappointing defeat to strugglers NorwichAny

hopes of a late play-off push were crushed at Loftus Road tonight,

after a disappointing 1-0 defeat to Championship strugglers Norwich.It was a first win in fourteen for the Canaries, leaving Rangers without a win in six league games.The

goal came mid-way through the second half, after a mix-up between

Kaspars Gorkss and Damion Stewart in the Rangers defence. Wesley

Hoolahan took advantage when he fed striker Darel Russell, who slotted

home low to Radek Cerny''s left from twelve yards out.QPR should

have taken the lead in the first minute, but Liam Miller''s shot flew

past David Marshall in the Ipswich goal. Jordi Lopez almost marked his

full debut with a goal, but his free kick flashed past the wrong side

of the post ten minutes later. The Rest of it

[BlyBlyBabes 0]

Brilliant outsider?

Brilliant maybe.

Outsider. I don''t think so.

Now just who is he/she.............................????

[:O]

OTBC

 

[0ridgemanddMMyyyy0Falseen-USTrue 0]

QPR should have taken the lead in the first minute, but Liam Miller''s shot flew past David Marshall in the Ipswich goal. Jordi Lopez almost marked his full debut with a goal, but his free kick flashed past the wrong side of the post ten minutes later.

The Rest of it

 

Must have been some bloody shot if it flew past the Ipswich goal (whats that 50 miles)!

[Chelmsford Canary 0]

Interesting to see they think we are rubbish - even better to do them over!

Great spot though!

[pennywise 0]

had  to laugh at the bit about players signing for norwich where apparantly you don`t need a medical   [:D]

[JJ 0]

Only just got round to reading this - great article.  I can''t believe the person writing it is a QPR fan.  They know more about Norwich than some Norwich fans do!

That 3-2 win over Rangers he mentions from April 06 was a horrible affair, with fans fighting among themselves.  I still think that win kept Worthington in a job for another six months.

 

[missing in action? 0]

Aside from his distaste for doc (who i think has improved), i think he is spot on. piss poor manager choice, and as a consequence, piss poor decisions being made by them. he thinks we will stay up though, which suprises me when he talks about us being so poor.

[Faded Jaded Semi Plastic SOB 1,023]

What do those of you who say we signed the wrong Blackpool player have to say for themselves now?......

[london Canary 0]

[quote user="JJ"]

Only just got round to reading this - great article.  I can''t believe the person writing it is a QPR fan.  They know more about Norwich than some Norwich fans do!

That 3-2 win over Rangers he mentions from April 06 was a horrible affair, with fans fighting among themselves.  I still think that win kept Worthington in a job for another six months.

 

[/quote]

spot on

[corbs 0]

The army is on the march, only 20 points from the play offs. A late run should get them there…”do different”, that is the Norfolk way!