How We Have Lost It

[Rudolph Hucker 0]

I had an interesting conversation recently about cycling in the mountains from an experienced rider who had himself climbed Alpe d''Huez.

Choose your gear, he said, and keep going; keep your cadence and however much your muscles burn absolutely do not stop or falter because you simply will not get going again. This is a good example of sports psychology.

As soon as you stop, the fatigue kicks in. Once you achieve your goal the fatigue kicks in.

Another time I recall a conversation with a travel writer and asked him how a particular TV personality in his late 60''s could cope with participating in two TV shows over several weeks, one in LA USA and one in London. He told me you can manage it provided you keep going as it hits you when you stop.

Getting back to Norwich City, it is all well and good talking about the mountain they have climbed this season but, with sports psychologists available to them they have fallen into the trap of allowing themselves to stop. I certainly do not blame Paul Lambert as he will know how to maintain his drive but he looks like a man trying to find momentum in his players and compromising himself in the process.

The same thing has happened to many of our supporters and their switching off has transmitted itself to the players and now we are getting the consequences the mood is turning nasty.

How do top players play so many games? They play EPL games, more Cup games and European games with all the travel and Internationals with International tournaments too. The answer has to be that their target is further up that mountain so they keep pedalling after others have stopped; they are on the trans-Atlantic plane longer and while the fatigue will hit them as hard or harder when they stop they will have covered more distance.

In a radio commentary on Five Live last week Robbie Savage described a half-hearted challenge and said that many professionals in games they consider to be dead rubbers will not commit themselves as fully because an injury means weeks in the treatment room instead of holidaying with your family.

Although I attribute our momentum loss to the Leicester match it is clear to me our players allowed themselves to lapse after the brilliant win at Spurs and at that point in came the fatigue and loss of mental sharpness. The trouble is; once you have lost it, it is very difficult to regain in.

As a caveat, this is not true of all of our players but it is true of enough of them.

Note the momentum built over recent weeks by Wigan. Fatigue will not be a problem to them as they still strive for their goal. Their problem will be maintaining the intensity in their two final which are ones, unlike their recent games, they can be expected to win.

And so we slide, unable to get back on the bike and pick up where we left off. Our players and many of our supporters have failed to set themselves ongoing targets and this is why it annoys me to hear supporters say Cup losses to Championship sides don''t matter and ''we did alright for 70 minutes.''

Now our players and ourselves are being punished. At the end of the season another three points might be worth three million in prize money. We suffer the ignominy of falling behind Swansea and hearing their manager lauded over Paul Lambert and the humiliation of heavy defeats. We are relying on other''s results over our own to mathematically push ourselves over the line and I am sorry to say that today I was willing to take a 2 - 0 defeat to save our plummeting goal difference.

For all he has done for them I am disappointed so few of our players are prepared to keep up their momentum for him. I just hope we don''t meet Arsenal on a good day next week or we could get another hiding.

We forget how inexperienced Paul Lambert is. Look at how Moyes has kept his players focused. PL will learn from this and in addition will need a big transfer budget to put some proper pressure on our better players next season.

[Canarino 0]

Agree 100% with the OP. Great post.

[Bill 1,788]

"............................................Look at how Moyes has kept his players focused. PL will learn from this

and in addition will need a big transfer budget to put some proper

pressure on our better players next season."perhaps you shouldn''t have paused at that point

[YankeeCanary 0]

 

This is like "hitting the head on the nail" Rudolph. We''re bleeding and it hurts. Good post.

[king canary 7,578]

[quote user="RUDOLPH HUCKER"] Look at how Moyes has kept his players focused. PL will learn from this and in addition will need a big transfer budget to put some proper pressure on our better players next season.[/quote]Don''t really understand this- Everton started the season awfully, he has''t kept his players focused, just woken them up.

[BlyBlyBabes 0]

There''s an awful amount of truth in what you have written above, Rudolph.

 

Another thing. The luck we had earlier in the season is now evening itself out.

 

OTBC

[Billabong 0]

Spot on with the cycling analogy Rudolph and totally agree with you - the point at which we lost the momentum - was definitely the Leicester game

[unique 434]

An excellent post.

The frustrating thing for me is that, giving penalties away for fun aside, we have regressed to the sort of defending that kicked off the season and just gave away so many points.

The phrase "we will/must learn from these defensive mistakes" is sounding like a well worn record, and having conceded eleven goals in the last three games is testimony that certain players are just not adapting to the standard of football.

Things wouldn''t seem quite so bad if we were looking threatening in attack - but we''re not. Goal attempts must have fallen to an all-season low.

Fans frustrations are greater because expectations, rightly or wrongly, had reached expectations of a top-half end of season position. It is made worse as we slip behind Swansea, and see teams like Wigan playing free-flowing football, giving every top-six team one of their toughest games of the season.

Liverpool came to the city with a much-changed team, bereft of premiership points, one possible eye on Wembley, and potentially as vulnerable as they have ever been on a visit to Carrow Road.

The fact that we presented Suarez, of all players, with his first ever? Premiership hat-trick, tripling his goal tally into the bargain, made defeat particularly hard to take.

I was hoping, several matches ago, that PL would try and finish the season with a settled, and what he considered, his best side. This would have been an experiment itself, as he has not pursued this policy all season.

The constant team-changing doesn''t seem to be practised by any other manager save for perhaps Pulis. It has worked well up to a point for Norwich this season, but I feel a settled side would be better equipped to impose itself on the opposition than we have managed of late.

[Rudolph Hucker 0]

I seem to recall, Unique, that in previous seasons it was a case of, ''who holds the shirt'' which created pressure for places and pressure to perform to stay in the side as losing the shirt would mean a long session on the sidelines.

The meritocracy has gone. The incentive and competitiveness has gone. Players are not fighting for their places as they were and the team has no cohesiveness.

All the talk about Paul Lambert moving on is very premature in my opinion. Lambert is finding he has a lot to learn and as Eadie said yesterday needs at least another successful Season at this level before coming onto the radar of a bigger club.

When he looks back I am sure Paul Lambert will see much he could have done better in the last third of the season - especially around motivation and dealing with some individuals. He has consequently lost out on money that cold have bought him a Kyle Naughton above whatever budget he expected.

Perhaps we should understand better we have a manager learning his trade at the top level who we hope will continue to develop and improve. Should he be tempted away that could be to his detriment and our gain if it comes too soon for him and if McNally uses our status to bring in experience.

Paul Lambert has been loyal to players but now needs to freshen things up and needs to find it within himself to do so at a club where, in reality, he has been in his comfort zone.

Nigel Worthington was in his comfort zone, we overly tolerated it and look what happened. It''s a thin line and this is where McNally, charged with ensuring the health of NCFC the Club, comes in.

[nutty nigel 7,509]

There''s loads of truth in what you say Rudolph. A cracking post as usual. But the majority of fans, certainly on here, didn''t set their target above 40 points. Neither did Lambert. Not publicly anyway. He made it plain from the day we were promoted what our target was to be. And when it appeared we could realistically achieve a top half finish, even a top 8 finish, it was totally rubbished. Strangely we now have such a lot of negativity even though we have exceeded the target most had set. We have certainly eased off. Not intentionly or dishonestly. But that edge we had is gone.

 

I reckon you could liken our whole season to the 90 minutes at Swansea yesterday. Did they ease off having looked for all the world to have won the game? Not dishonestly but the edge went. They didn''t lose the game. Just like we won''t be relegated.  But from a position of so much promise the ending was disappointing.

 

But we still have two games to go and a chance to finish the season on a positive note. But a word of caution, it could well be that both Arsenal and Aston Villa will be striving to achieve their targets, so it won''t be easy to turn our form around.

 

 

[Rudolph Hucker 0]

Goals aside, there were three first half incidents yesterday that worried me: they were throw-ins to Liverpool and we were caught knapping every time because Liverpool were sharper in their thinking and application. Our players were well behind the play mentally.

We have failed to play to the whistle in a number of games lately. I can think of Stoke''s throw in and goal; Everton''s second and loose ball reactions against Man City as examples. On top of this we generally conceed first and have now got into the habit of conceding twice before replying.

This is all down to mental approach and I do take account do fatigue affecting mental sharpness but overall it indicates a general switch off the causes of which are not being addressed.

[king canary 7,578]

[quote user="RUDOLPH HUCKER"]I seem to recall, Unique, that in previous seasons it was a case of, ''who holds the shirt'' which created pressure for places and pressure to perform to stay in the side as losing the shirt would mean a long session on the sidelines.

The meritocracy has gone. The incentive and competitiveness has gone. Players are not fighting for their places as they were and the team has no cohesiveness.

All the talk about Paul Lambert moving on is very premature in my opinion. Lambert is finding he has a lot to learn and as Eadie said yesterday needs at least another successful Season at this level before coming onto the radar of a bigger club.

When he looks back I am sure Paul Lambert will see much he could have done better in the last third of the season - especially around motivation and dealing with some individuals. He has consequently lost out on money that cold have bought him a Kyle Naughton above whatever budget he expected.

Perhaps we should understand better we have a manager learning his trade at the top level who we hope will continue to develop and improve. Should he be tempted away that could be to his detriment and our gain if it comes too soon for him and if McNally uses our status to bring in experience.

Paul Lambert has been loyal to players but now needs to freshen things up and needs to find it within himself to do so at a club where, in reality, he has been in his comfort zone.

Nigel Worthington was in his comfort zone, we overly tolerated it and look what happened. It''s a thin line and this is where McNally, charged with ensuring the health of NCFC the Club, comes in.[/quote]Totally agree with this- Lambert is still on a learning curve and it will be interesting to see what changes he makes next season both in terms of personnel and his managment style. For instance next season will we see a generally more settled starting 11 or will we still make 4 or 5 changes a game? Losing games is something Lambert is getting used to as much as us- before this season we had not lost two back to back games under him, now with the game against Arsenal looming it could be four.

[Canary Wundaboy 1,358]

Have to agree with the OP.

[. 0]

[quote user="BlyBlyBabes"]

There''s an awful amount of truth in what you have written above, Rudolph.

 

Another thing. The luck we had earlier in the season is now evening itself out.

 

OTBC

[/quote]The ''bubble'' has burst Bly.... and at the best possible point with the club safe for another year. Like any production line, it''s all hands to the pump to complete an order and once it''s known that the target is met the discipline evaporates.Equally... those at the club are no longer ''hungry'' for recognition having reached the Premiership pinnacle. Career ambition duly achieved.

[lappinitup 629]

[quote user="Jeremy Cluckson"]Equally... those at the club are no longer ''hungry'' for recognition having reached the Premiership pinnacle. Career ambition duly achieved.[/quote]That''s it then.......SACK THE BOARD!!! [8o|] [8o|] [8o|]

[CJ 0]

I have to say this is one of the best posts on here and I agree entirely that we lost that momentum at the Leicester match and had never gained it back except for fleeting glimpses against the big clubs.

Lambert must have realised that sooner or later the "excitement" of playing against the best would wear off and probably also the players think we are "safe" . You would think they would need no encouragement but confidence is also a big factor.

Before Leicester anything seemed possible even a place at Wembley or in top six. That game for whatever reason shattered the team and fans and we really have not recovered.

As poster implies difficult to get momentum back when lost!

[Rudolph Hucker 0]

As very remote as the mathematics were the fact we are now safe will make a real difference.

We are now all looking forward to next season when we know we will be competing in the EPL.

We know we will have good money to spend and fresh players will arrive.

We know the ground enlargement moves a year closer.

This is going to feed through to the players and the feeling around the club will lift as uncertainties are resolved.

If our players are more relaxed this could be a catalyst for improved play.

[Rock The Boat 1,324]

Next season we will have to raise our targets. While most were happy with a 17th place finish at the beginning of the season, next year we need to be looking for a top-half finish plus two good cup runs.

The moment we become complacent, as we now seem to be, we lose momentum,and start losing games.