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Rudolph Hucker

A SLUMP OF OUR OWN MAKING?

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Here we go sliding down the league, possibly down to 11th at the end of the weekend.

 

We played well against Man Utd and we stood up to Stoke although we have seldom threatened a side less this season in the EPL.

 

But for me it all goes back to the FA Cup game at home to Leicester. There we were, on a high having just beaten Swansea away and with good reason to look forwards to a cup run.

 

But to preserve his players for forthcoming Premier League games Paul Lambert rested Grant Holt, a man who only improves and maintains his standards when playing games anyway. He rested Ruddy for sentimental reasons it seemed and he gave every indication the game didn''t matter. At the end he didn''t even go for it with his subs - probably for fear of the draw and an extra game.

 

Beat Leicester or still be in the Cup and go up against United with so much to play for. But that wasn''t the case and while our first team became re-acquainted after a two week break we fatally lost the game in ten minutes because after that we had to chase hard.

 

We now have league defeats against man Utd at home and Stoke away which is no disgrace but.........with the FA Cup it is a losing streak of three, a fall of two to three places, a look over our shoulder, a pressure game against bloody Wigan and a Cup exit.

 

Slumps in the EPL are notoriously hard to stop and ironically, via the FA Cup, we have created a slump for ourselves because we didn''t value a Cup game against a Championship side highly enough.

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how is it a pressure game, of course we''ll be really disapointed, because it''s wigan, but at the end of the day we''ve only got to get around 5 more draws to become an established premier league side

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Stoke closed us down often forcing us to play long to a single striker who found it hard against two physical centrebacks. We rarely used the width of our first half formation to get behind the Stoke defense and on the rare occasions we did (Bennett''s run down the right first half) we had broken too quickly for anyone to be in a dangerous position.

After Fox came on we passed well but rarely into a threatening position. Playing Stoke was always going to be a tough physical game and 0-0 was probably a fair result. Ward should not have been beaten so easily for the goal.

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The Leicester match was just a side-show. We actually came into these two tough league games against Man Utd and Stoke on the back of a fantastic away win at Swansea.   Lose to Wigan, Newcastle and Wolves and you can call it a slump. But I can''t see Lambert letting that happen. Can you?

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Get a grip: sliding down the league? All of two places! Odd poor runs are always likely at this level, you are coming up against good sides week in week out, so a couple of defeats hardly constitutes a crisis.

Fact is, we fielded a weakened side in the cup and lost a game that didn''t really matter, outplayed the Champions and and were out bullied at Stoke. The latter two of these results were always on the cards: for many, the likes of Stoke are the sort of club we should aspire to be (if not with their ''style''!), there isno shame in losing to them.

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Well the one thing the last 2 games have shown is that it was completely pointless resting players for the cup with the league as our main priority.

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I agree with Rudolph - big mistake taking the foot off the pedal against Leicester - would have a real game to look forward to in a couple of weeks, think we are risking a lack of focus now and could be in for a hard run.  Wigan next should be a gimme on paper, but they may be smarting from today (or could even have a new manager to get them going!). 

 

Lambert is learning and has learnt quite a few lessons this last month!  Hopefully he will apply them next season.

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I don''t know what frustrates me more about this Board: the inability to differentiate between a suggestion for debate and an allegation; the inability to grasp the point or points being made or the inability to elucidate an argument to support a disagreement.

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A bit of a stupid question. Who else''s fault is it? If you win games or

lose games, it''s the making of the football club. Perhaps I bought the

wrong sort of heather yesterday.Have you tested if it''s a statistically significant slump? Probably not. If you randomly distributed the wins, draws & losses would you expect to get 3 successive losses?

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Op this was Lamberts decision and you are stating it could cost us and has messed our season up. Get real or you need to start saying that it is time for Lambert to go. Unfortunately if we lose our next 2 games Lamberts prophercy I beleive - they love me now, but lose 5 games on the trot and they will want me out, we all get to the end of our welcome could become reality.

Please dont destroy what we have just enjoy as comments like yours inside FCR will make Lambert beleive he cannot take us further. 

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If we pick up all three points next week then we''ll be all but safe, but if we were to lose then things may get a  bit tense - hopefully we''ve got enough about us to avoid getting drawn into the scrap at the bottom

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[quote user="RUDOLPH HUCKER"]I don''t know what frustrates me more about this Board: the inability to differentiate between a suggestion for debate and an allegation; the inability to grasp the point or points being made or the inability to elucidate an argument to support a disagreement.[/quote]I totally disagree that "the slump", as you call it, is of our own making because I don not believe for one minute that The Club, Lambert or any of the players went out against Liecester with the intention of losing the game.

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13 points clear of the relegation zone with 11 games left to play having won four, draw two and lost four of our last 10 league games. Hardly time to panic is it?

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Stoke learned from their trip to Carrow Road that they could not out play us by playing football, they had a game plan, their classic hoofball and it worked. However, we were poor today, and personally i think the game came to early for Howson.

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Perhaps starting of with ''here we go sliding down the league'' wasn''t the best thing to do if you were looking for in-depth analysis and debate!?

Whatever, I just don''t see there being any link: the last two games were always going to be tricky and one point from them would have been a good haul. The cup game is completely separate, in the same way that the MK game was earlier in the season: I''m sure no one wanted to lose either but the focus has always been the league. We move on to the next game, which if we play as we can we know we should win.

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[quote user="RUDOLPH HUCKER"]There is a world of difference between intending to lose and intending to get a result![/quote]Lambert picked a team he thought could win the game & the players tried to win the game - I call that intending to get a result.I suppose every time we lose from now on you''ll try & make out it was all down to losing an FA Cup match. So, what about the last 2 seasons then. Sort of blows your theory out of the water, doesn''t it?

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[quote user="Branston Pickle"] the last two games were always going to be tricky and one point from them would have been a good haul. [/quote]

 

Agreed - so why rest players for them.  Keep the confidence flowing by having a 6th round tie to look forward to.  Lambert will learn from this and it won''t happen next year.  A hard lesson but a lesson all the same.

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Take off Morison and Jackson and replace them with Wilbraham and Vaughan; straight swap, no extra striker, do you call that intending to get a result?

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[quote user="RUDOLPH HUCKER"]I don''t know what frustrates me more about this Board: the inability to differentiate between a suggestion for debate and an allegation; the inability to grasp the point or points being made or the inability to elucidate an argument to support a disagreement.[/quote]

Your post is clearly an allegation, I find it frustrating when the author of the OP is unable to interpret his own work and misconceives the meaning of it`s exposition.[;)]   

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[quote user="RUDOLPH HUCKER"]

Here we go sliding down the league, possibly down to 11th at the end of the weekend.

 

We played well against Man Utd and we stood up to Stoke although we have seldom threatened a side less this season in the EPL.

 

But for me it all goes back to the FA Cup game at home to Leicester. There we were, on a high having just beaten Swansea away and with good reason to look forwards to a cup run.

 

But to preserve his players for forthcoming Premier League games Paul Lambert rested Grant Holt, a man who only improves and maintains his standards when playing games anyway. He rested Ruddy for sentimental reasons it seemed and he gave every indication the game didn''t matter. At the end he didn''t even go for it with his subs - probably for fear of the draw and an extra game.

 

Beat Leicester or still be in the Cup and go up against United with so much to play for. But that wasn''t the case and while our first team became re-acquainted after a two week break we fatally lost the game in ten minutes because after that we had to chase hard.

 

We now have league defeats against man Utd at home and Stoke away which is no disgrace but.........with the FA Cup it is a losing streak of three, a fall of two to three places, a look over our shoulder, a pressure game against bloody Wigan and a Cup exit.

 

Slumps in the EPL are notoriously hard to stop and ironically, via the FA Cup, we have created a slump for ourselves because we didn''t value a Cup game against a Championship side highly enough.

[/quote]

There isn''t a single part of the above post that I disagree with. Those who do disagree and have no worthy arguments to back up their disagreements with are in total denial. That or they''re completely bleedin'' simple.

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The Leicester game should have been the important one , we were never going to get anything off United with the title race as it is , and for all those who will say we nearly grabbed a point , well after we equalised we hardly touched the ball and they could quite easily have netted three more .They cruised through the game and as soon as they needed to up it they did , never mind who wanted a boring FA Cup quarter final anyway ? and it worked a treat resting the players .

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I was disappointed as anyone with the performance

against Leicester and the rationale behind picking that team. But to say we are

now in a slump is absolutely crazy. We have lost to Man Utd at home and Stoke

City away. Of course they are 2 very disappointing results. But you also have

to be realistic and take into account the fact that United are title contenders

and Stoke are formidable at home. That isn’t a “little old Norwich” attitude as

Rob Butler would say. That is just a fact. Most teams in this division will

struggle pick up shedloads of points from those 2 fixtures. If we start playing

poorly against the likes of Wolves and Wigan at home then you do have a valid

argument.

 

To say we are sliding down the league is also a

massively knee jerk statement. If you look at the table there are 3 points

separating Stoke in 8th from Swansea in 14th. Swansea have a better goal

difference too so theoretically at least a victory next week could see them

rise about 6 places. That mid section of the Premiership between 8th

and 15th has become a little mini league of its own now effectively.

So the league positions of all the teams is likely to fluctuate a lot. Meanwhile

there is pretty big gap between Villa in 15th and the teams locked

in a relegation battle. So technically Villa could lose a lot of fixtures and

they wouldn’t be “sliding down the league.”

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[quote user="Ncfc"]The Leicester game should have been the important one , we were never going to get anything off United with the title race as it is , and for all those who will say we nearly grabbed a point , well after we equalised we hardly touched the ball and they could quite easily have netted three more .They cruised through the game and as soon as they needed to up it they did , never mind who wanted a boring FA Cup quarter final anyway ? and it worked a treat resting the players .[/quote]

I think it''s unfair on our performance to say Man Utd cruises to victory. They knew we were always like to play at them. So they sat back and let us come forward looking to hot us on the counter. That''s how Man Utd ted to play against potential banana skins. What we did well is defensively stop the counter and cut off the supply line to Hernandez and Wellbeck.

As for stoke. It wasn''t an impressive performance by far. But I seem to only recollect 2 or 3 genuine chances that they had on goal. It was a poor match but a point would ave been a air result.

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Just what are some people on when they write this sort of stuff ?OK we''ve lost three games in a row, and it''s probably the first time that''s happened under Paul Lambert, but how on Earth can it be called a slump ? The trouble is people have become accustomed to us winning more often than not and now expect that to happen every week. That doesn''t always happen with the best teams and it certainly won''t happen with us.Yes, I too felt that more more should have been given to the Leicester game but it didn''t seem to make much difference to how the team performed against Man Utd the following weekend. That was a terrific effort and a fantastic match.Today''s performance was flat in what was an awful match but against Stoke that happens a lot. They''re not renowned for playing easy-on -the-eye football and it''s difficult for any team to play against that.We''ve now got a chance to up the ante next Sunday against a side that tries to play football and that should make for a better spectacle. But should we not win please don''t let''s press the panic button.It''ll be a pity if this season just peters out but let''s be grateful that we are, to all intents and purposes, already safe and we have been for some time.

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