By what do you measure our success/failure this season?

[Morph 31]

Opinions on where the club sits in terms of success this season seem to vary on the noticeboard although there hasn''t been topic that specifically addresses the question. It''s been more focused on the negative aspects of the team management.

However, it does appear that a discussion of what metrics you use to gauge City''s success this might be of merit. It might help clarify why people think Worthy et al have done an excellent or awful job this year.

In the long term view we could argue that relegation this year is part of the long term plan. The monies acquired by this one season in the Premiership will help bolster the club and the squad for later years. But is the long term view that we will be back again in two years time with a bigger and better squad that has taken the Championship by storm?

The ultimate success this season would have been to finish 17th. I didn''t expect any more than that and seriously believed the club - squad, manager et al were capable of that - early season indications were that it wasn''t wide of the mark. Above 17th would have been an exemplary performance.

A mediocre success would have been to finish somewhere other than last with a modicum of pride with positive results against the teams we expected to be fighting with - the Palaces, West Broms, Blackburns, Fulhams, Southamptons, Portmouths of the division.

A success bordering on failure was to finish last not so far adrift of the relegation pack and with our personal pride in tact because we weren''t the whipping boys.

Sadly, we''ve gone outside of any of the above because of where we sit now and how we look compared to the other teams in the bottom half of the Premiership. City must look like an easy three points on the fixture list at present.

The season isn''t done and I really hope that some lost pride can be restored. We''re down and I don''t believe any thing other than relegation will happen. I''ll be amazed if it did. However, the signs aren''t good.

So how do you measure our success this season?

...

[Tumbleweed 106]

I agree with your rankings Morph.

Success= 17th or above

Par= relegation with pride

Failure= lame relegation, bottom or failure to compete.

Success would have seen Nigel given the Freedom of the City. I am sure we could all have accepted Par but the limp surrender is, despite our realism, worse than we could have expected.

More interesting is next season.

Success= top two

Par= Play offs

Failure= 7th downwards

Question is whether we should accept Par as promotion via plays off or just getting there into them?

[TheMarshmallowMan 0]

Good thread.

Personally, my measure of merit is very similar to yours - amazing success being staying up, success going down but having earnt respect, slight failure going down but not doing our best but learning good lessons and major failure being going down without having really learnt anything or even trying our best.

I think we''re at the final level, with this season being a major failure. It''s clear that Worthington hasn''t learnt any lessons (he''s repeatedly made fundamental mistakes) and we''ve been playing some of the worst, passion-free football I''ve seen from a Norwich team (although admittedly the later Hamilton teams do surpass this lack of passion quite substantially).

[TwoSheds 0]

Your spot on,i think we were all hoping for atleast 17th spot,even us Worthy bashers were realistly hoping for that.Although aparently by others we were expecting to become a established Prem club.Anyway if we had been performing well & had shown some guts & determination over the last 30 games & certain unforced changes had have been made to the team & i saw some fight & passion from the players along with some tactical knowhow from Worthy then relegation would have been so much easier to live with.However as far as im concerened this has not been the case this season so i do feel the season has been a failure on that front.

Just waitng for the bashing now

[We need a Manager 0]

Next season success = Promotion , anything else is failure because if we dont come straight back Ashton and any other of the better players we still have will leave then your back to square one an average Championship side.

[Darlo dumplin’ 0]

success = stayin up

failure = gorn down

disaster = the ony side wot went up gorn down

sewereside = we''re the ony side wot went up gorn down agin ''n scummers go up

wus ''n anythin'' anywon cud think of (never farce yer workmates ''n anywon agin) = we go down ''n scummers stay down ''n beat uz at gorn up agin next year

[Morph 31]

[quote]Next season success = Promotion , anything else is failure because if we dont come straight back Ashton and any other of the better players we still have will leave then your back to square one an ave...[/quote]

Premier1, I was actually looking for views on this season.Mid-table mediocrity next season is a dramatic failure, that is taken and Worthy would be seriously typing up the CV. Promotion has to be the target. Anything less is, to me at least, a failure.How do you rate this season? And what did you expect?...

[FatMan Fat 0]

An excellent first post on the thread that takes the emotion out of how many of us feel and put a constructive measure on what has, or what has not, been achieved this season - well done, Morph.

We are bottom of the leagure; we have the worst defence record by far; we have one of the worst attacking records; "ipso facto" we are the worst team in the league; we have not grown in tactical awareness through the season and apart from a few early games when "enthusiasm" carried us through we have looked out of our depth.

The only conclusion can be that this seasaon has been an abject failure.

[Saint Canary 0]

I pretty much saw it as you did Morph.  17th place even by a 1 goal, goal difference would have been massive success.

What and where we are now, bottom, worst defence, one of the worst attacks and just not looking like we can win any game is disappointing

[Morph 31]

I''m a bit disappointed by the lack of responses to this post.

Opinion on the board has become polarised of late around the issue of Worthy and whether he should remain in a job. I had hoped that my thread would, at least, shed some light on why people are some emotional about the issue.

To me it''s pretty clear that several posters are worked up because the club aren''t where they expected them to be at the start of the season. Meanwhile other posters appear to be simply happy with the way things are because supporting City is the prime issue.

C''mon guys do us the honour of showing us why you feel the way you do. BedsC, Goleston Jim, BarclayEndKid, 1stWizard, YankeeC and so on. It might help you to better understand the other members of our virtual community.

...

[ZLF 335]

Have been away for a week hence my (welcome?) lack of replies.

Raging success    -  17th - as I posted pre and early season when mid table talk was the rage

Success - gut wrenching last day relegation or proving we can compete week i week out

Par -  Relegation

Failure - record goalss conceeded, minimum points ever, biggest game defeat record, relegated by March, not being competetive.

 

Where do I think we sit this season?  For most of the season the players have fought without having the ability and in a poor premier year the fact we have been competetive for so many games suggests we are probably a par+/success-.

 

For next year par is 3-6 place.

 

OTBC 

 

[YankeeCanary 0]

Morph, I am repeating below an extract from something I posted last September. It is against the expectation I had at that time that I measure our performance this season. I did not know then that we would sign Ashton but I was confident we would sign a good striker in the January window. My prediction had us struggling to even reach thirty points coming into the last three games. From the perspective of number of points, I did not see us doing better than 32 points on the year. Norwich actually achieved 5 points less than I had thought by the 28 game mark. I did not see the team doing better than getting 4 points from the 5th  block of 7 games, and that still looks realistic. So measuring strictly from a total points perspective I see us achieving 27 points on the season, or 5 points less than I was expecting. If Norwich actually achieved 36 or 37 points then I can honestly say I would have regarded that as a successful season. Moving away from the number of points, however, I think most of us have been disappointed with the decline in spirited competitiveness and lack of defensive coordination since the end of last year. Clearly, the players as well as Nigel and coaching staff must share the responsibility for that decline.

September input follows: ( some had us achieving mid to high 40 points )

To achieve 48 points Norwich would need to maintain a pace of 1.5 points per game from their next 21 games. A team that maintained that pace last season would have finished in fifth place in this division. Norwich are not capable of doing that. From a talent standpoint we have one of the weakest squads in the division.

We are not going to win many games at all. Any victory should be regarded as a great victory. Enjoy the Premiership. Give Nigel your support, he has only 7 games worth of Premiership experience as a manager. Enjoy the talent that you see on show from all teams because there’s only 31 games to go before we head straight back to where we came from. It’s true that I ( or anyone ) can not know this for sure but it requires a cockeyed optimist to reach any other conclusion.

Before the season got underway I divided the season up into 20% blocks, five series of seven games each. I left the three games at the tail end of the season to one side as insurance, albeit I was fairly certain we would need to take good results from these final games to have any chance of avoiding relegation.

Here is my assessment of points I expected us to yield from these blocks of games.

First Seven – 4 points

I expected us to achieve the 4 points that we have although, like many others, I was counting on a victory against Crystal Palace to be the big contributor to the 4 points.

Second Seven – 8 points

Portsmouth (H), WBA (A), Everton (H), Manchester City (A), Blackburn (H), Charlton (A), Southampton (H)

Third Seven – 6 points

Birmingham (A), Fulham (H), Bolton(H), Chelsea ( A), Spurs (H), Middlesbrough (A), Portsmouth (A)

Fourth Seven - 7 Points

Liverpool (H), Aston Villa (A), Middlesbrough (H), Everton (A), WBA (H), Blackburn (A), Manchester City (H)

Fifth Seven – 4 points

Chelsea (H), Bolton (A), Arsenal (A), Manchester United (H), Crystal Palace (A), Newcastle (H), Charlton (H)

Like many others I suspect, I don’t see us doing that

[Ark 0]

I think the problem is that deep down we all have that feeling at the beginning of the year that "maybe this will be our season" - ie. that we might defy all odds and qualify for europe, finish in the top half, have a cup run or something of the like. After watching City triumph as they did last year its just really hard to accept a season like we''ve seen - even as likely as it was in all truth to turn out this way.

I expected to see us relegated, but I would have loved to see us get an unexpected result against one of the big-boys (one of the promoted teams seems to manage it most years) - so... saturday''s the last chance i suppose....

[chicken 0]

Generally I would agree with you Morph but I am finding that I am frustrated and not disappointed with our performances.

I think that we can be proud because we have made an impact on the premiership. I dont remember Jose Mourinho suggesting that any other of the bottom three were "unlucky" and "didnt deserve it."

I think that some teams and people have genuinely been impressed with the quality that at times we have displayed.

However, what frustrates me is that we simply havent taken some of the chances presented to us. We are capable of beating the three or even four teams directly above us in the table.

We have even been capable of holding top six teams to a draw and in some cases beating them. What is key here is that we are not getting the results against the teams that count.

Blackburn away and at home. Crystal Palace at home. Its results like that that have made our position more enevitable.

We have made teams like Newcastle, Middlesborough, Man U, Everton, Bolton look incredibly beatable. Yet they have players in their teams worth our entire squad put together.

For me the most upsetting thing is the money. No disrespect to Ashton but the fact that he cost £3 million says a lot. You look at teams in mid-table and even some of the teams just above the relegation zone and you will see that many have at least one player that has cost more than £5 million.

And that is the problem. I think the board may well have been reluctant at the beggining of the season to throw large sums of money in without seeing what we had could do first. And in a way they were right.

We need more like £10 million to get in a good number of quality players not just one or two that will hopefully keep us up. Its too big a risk.

It sounds mad but going down might actually help us. Just being in the Premiership means that players prices are hiked up when we are interested. Being in the championship allows us to bring in quality players at championship prices. Imagine how much Francis would have cost us if we had signed him whilst we were in the Prem!

A good example is Robbie Blake, is he really worth £1.5 million? How much does that make Healy worth?

Anyway, I will settle with being somewhere between par and poor. I honestly thought we would be hard-pressed to stay up and do it by the skin of our teeth. If we ended the season challenging for that spot I would be happy and would feel real progress, by this I mean missing out on it by say a maximum of five points. Poor for me is finnishing bottom with the knowledge that we never even looked as if we could challenge another team in this league. We have surpassed that so its no longer an option unless we finnish say 15 points off 17th.

[knowhatimean 0]

Hi Morph
I would have thought that the measurement of our success this season can easily be made by picking up any newspaper, looking at the league position we currently hold and look like holding to the end of the season and watching most of the inept performances of our team, unfortunately, often in front of the TV cameras for the world to see. As I and many others have said before, this can only be down to the persons responsible for assembling a team equipped to play against some of the top teams in Europe. We have, in this regard, failed miserably. I have been supporting and watching Norwich City for over sixty years and like any other clubs in the football leagues, we have had our good spells and bad spells. We were never going to produce many surprises in our first year back in the Prem. after nine years absence but when you see teams of perhaps similar standing, do enough to cement their positions in the league it is sad not to see Norwich City on par with them. We have a wonderful, ground, wonderful supporters and, up to last season, I thought we had a wonderful board. Not so sure about this season, though. Clubs like West Brom, Southampton, Portsmouth were not slow to change their Management teams and I do know know why Norwich should be any different. After all,in any form of management, success is measured by performance and unfortunately they have not performed well enough.

OTBC

[Jim Smith 2,610]

My expectations at the start of the season were that we would be embroiled in a relegation battle but my gut feeling was that we would enough to stand a pretty decent chance of staying up.

Staying up would have represented a success.

Narrow relegation would not have been a success (I don''t see how anyone could say relegation could be any kind of success and anyone who regards it as such is part of the problem with whats gone on at the club this season) but if achieved with us having given our all and played to the best of our abilities would have been acceptable.

Our current position in my eyes represents a resounding failure this season and is not acceptable due the the way it has come about.

Next season anything other than promotion will be a failure as as someone has pointed out above it will send us back to square one again.

 

 

 

[Peter 0]

Success would be able to hold my head up, because we truly did our best.  I can''t as this season has been an embarrassment, Delia coming a distant second to Worthy''s under achievers.  Too late now for the old up and at em.

Can anyone truly say this was my best, certain exceptions apart you know who he is ? or perhaps you don''t.

[FatMan Fat 0]

Well said, KnowwhatI mean!!

[Big Rob 0]

Well said Dad! sorry i mean knowhatimean!

We all knew that this season would be a struggle but 17th place should never have been too much to ask. At the end of the day we are on our way down and you can only say that the season must go down as a big failure. enough said!

[Editor of Milk 0]

There is no ''par'' this season. Success means staying up. Failure means relegation.

Never mind eh? At least Luton''s not too far to go and I just love those beach hut/greenhouses where the stand should be.

[Ark 0]

[quote]I think the problem is that deep down we all have that feeling at the beginning of the year that "maybe this will be our season" - ie. that we might defy all odds and qualify for europe, finish in the...[/quote]

He-hey... Looks like whatever happens from here on in, my main criterion for the season not being a total failure has been met! Relegation in 20th place would now only rate as a mild disappointment in my book.