Quality of Signings

[Bill Taylor 0]

Having been a Canaries supporter for 50 years I was delighted to see them return to the premiership and was looking forward to the new signings promised by Nigel Worthington to assist us in our quest for premiership survival but I believe overall the quality has been poor.

Let us look at them Simon Charlton an experienced premiership defender but lacking in height to play a pivital role in defence and now dropped.Gary Doherty ,never really made an impression and now dropped,friends of mine who were Spurs supporters were delighted to see him join us. T

homas Helveg, I know he has been injured but was quickly replaced at full back by Marc Edworthy a free transfer from Wolves !

Matt Jonson, just scored his first goal for the reserves,never scored for the first team.

David Bentley,I saw him play in a pre-season friendly at Peterborough and he looked impressive but he has flattered to deceive in his premiership starts.

It is difficult to pass judgment on Ward & Gallagher as neither has had little first team action.

The signing of Stuart is a short term measure to try and assist us to stay in the premiership and only time will tell.It looks unlikely that we will survive this season and I am concerned that we have a manager who says we are still learning about defending after 29 matches and have the worst defensive record in the division!

The signing of Dean Ashton is a positive step and augers well for the future but a change of manager may be required if we are going to return in the future to the premiership if the enevitable happens this season and we are relegated.

How is it that a team who joined us in the premiership via the play-offs has six more points than us,looks more likely to score and less likely to concede,is  it down to the attitude of the players, the motivation provided by the manager or the quality of their close season signings ?

[ZLF 274]

Welcome Bill - quality posts like this are always welcome.  My views on some of your questions are below

Is it down to the attitude of the players?  No, I think that the attitude and committment of the palyers has, overall been excellent.  All players, whether existing or new signings, have dug in and worked their socks off on a pretty consistent basis.   I havent seen Tugay types of appearances where players have been on the pitch to just take the wages  -credit to the managers and playing staff for that.

The motivation of the manager -  see above

The quality of the close season signings.  I think it is no coincidence that our worst spell came after Charlton and Bentely were injured/dropped, Bentley having class and Charltons experence astonishingly abandonded despite looking like our best central defender irrespective of his lack of height;   Jonson has improved the flanks, even if he does remain a disappointment on expectations; Helveg has been shifted from pillar to post as he adapted to the pace of the game but remains, on the basis of his Liverpool performance, our most accomplished defender and being one of two city players that can actually tackle (Jonson the other; do the coaching staff think the game is a non contact sport as the number of tackles outside these two is abysmal)  Safri looks no better than Fizzy Pop class and Doc would be an able central defender behind Shacks and Charlie.    Overall I think that the close season signings have improved our team rather than hindered us - they just have not played enough.

In addition I would add 

• Manager failing to see clear short comings of some key players (Docherty, Helveg, Drury, Charlie all dropped from defence ahead of two far more culpable individuals)
• Manager failure to identify teams best formation and use players in their preferred position
• Failure to play new defenders and replace enough defenders
• Failure to address defence on coaching field

OTBC

[sheded 0]

While I don`t agree about the " inevitable " bit  ... the rest of your post  has lots of truth in it Bill ! .......  I never knock Worthy as a rule  .... but I do feel that  the staff around him   still havent grasped  how we can lift ourselves of the floor ..... frankly, they arent up to the job   !! ...... we need someone like Stuart Pearson [ temp ? manager of Mancity ]   to be a sidekick to Worthy  ... 

[mat gore 0]

Well, the signings haven''t had the affect we would have hoped.  However,

Simon Charlton 250k

Thoma Helveg 0k

GAry Doherty 500k

Mattias Jonson 900k

D.Bentley 0k

Y.Safri 500k

comes to less cash than Palace spent on one Ecuadorian who played 2 games.

Palace spent much much more than we did.  Thats life.  Our board has been fantastic.

We;ve had v.v.v.bad luck with injuries this year compared to the v.v.v.good luck we had last year.  We''ve also had a lot of bad luck with dodgy decisions and were very unfortunate with the fixture computer.  Losing all our initial games drained the confidence and had a very serious impact on the season.  By the time we hit the winnable games we had lost confidence and drew too many games we should have won.

Personally, I would say ALL the signings we made look worth the money spent and more.  I think NW has made some bad tactical mistakes again this year and has taken too long to drop certain players and has played others out of position, however, he has been slowly learning.

We have a much much better squad than the one we came up with.  We haven''t disgraced ourselves and could yet stay up.

 

Lets just enjoy the rest of the season and roll on next year.

 

[Northern Yella 0]

There is always a clash of quantity vrs quality when it comes to transfer dealings. You either go the Gerard Houllier route and buy a big squad of average players, or you do an Alex Ferguson and you gamble all your money on one big signing ( Buying the Roo, when it was perfectly obvious they needed a quality goalkeeper and a replacement for Roy Keane (Gattuso in in the summer)).

Worthy really needed to do the earlier option, which he did, we had a desperately small squad and as much as I would have loved him to sign a Phil Jageilka, Micheal Dawson or Danny Gabbidon, we simply couldn''t afford the gamble in terms of squad size. It all turned out we had a bit of spare cash thanks to Geoffery Wattling to bring in one quality player and Ashton is a great signing for now and the future.

The problems haven''t really been how much we have spent but the way the players are organised into a system. Dowie has not only built a team, but a strong, well organised defensive system, something we definitely have not had. Still its been a good ride and I for one am determined to enjoy the rest of the season, role in Championship glory next year

[Branston Pickle 3,667]

I think our signings have generally been good ones, it is just that they have not necessarily been the right ones at the right times!

Ashton: clearly likely to be the biggest success, a great signing - but we should have gambled on him pre-season.  We signed him at a time when it would have been better to get someone in defence: we were, and are still, shipping 2-3 goals per game and no striker on the planet could score enough to give regular wins in those circumstances.

Helveg and Jonson: both good signings, but we should have learned from Sam Allardyce''s attitude that foreigners won''t be up to speed until Christmas.  This was certainly the case with our two "biggest name" pre-season signings; both started to look the part around then, but Helveg then got injured and Jonson looks good but keeps getting battered around the head!

Bentley was looking good on occasion, but sadly got injured at a bad time: having him back for the run-in will add to our (slim) chances of survival, but I am disappointed with his goals tally!

Doc seems to be carrying the can for the awful goals per game ratio; though this is unfair on him, he has been no worse than anyone else - but this is the point: we needed someone better than what we had already, not the same/worse!  Defence is where I have been disappointed the most with the management - if WBA and Palace can keep clean sheets and nick games 1-0 then I am damn certain we should be able to - but we don''t have a chance of doing so if we are going to let 2-3 in each match!  We should have kept Malky as a squad player at the very least: we seem to have no more defenders in the squad than last year, which is daft.

Charlton has been better than his £250k would have suggested, and it comes to something when a 33(?) year old journeyman bought for a bargain can look like one of your best defenders (Shackell apart)!!!!

The other signings I saw mostly as squad players - Safri has done ok when called on, Stuart has looked ok but I''m not really sure why we signed him when we needed a defender!

[chicken 0]

No, no and NO!

Ashton was signed at the right moment. At the beggining of the season we had Huckerby and Svensson up front who both looked as if they could perform to some level up front. They certainly arnt any worse than any of the other teams in or around the bottom three.

In fact when you look at it we did ok in the first half of the season (the run up to christmas) and it was a lack of goals for not too many goals against that was letting us down. Just think how many games we drew then! Had Ashton had the chance that McKenzie spurned I am sure that he would have burried it. We really did need a striker when we signed Ashton.

Perhaps the defence took a step down after feeling the pressure lifted off them by his signing? Who knows but whatever you say we needed Ashton then.

As for signing him in the pre-season, it was never an option. How many players score 20 odd goals in the 2nd division and yet arnt up to 1st division let alone premiership. For example isnt Windass banging them in at the moment? If he was really that good another team would have signed him in pre-season. No we signed him at the right time after he had proven that he is capable of getting the goals at that level.

Also he would have been stepping up two leagues not one.

As for signing a defender, that would have been another £3 million. I dont think we have the money to do that. At the time as I have said before the problem was the lack of goals and from that perspective Worthingto has made a great signing.

Like I have said before, dont slag off the signings after they have failed to perform and then blame it on the manager. They are signed on the levels they have performed to previoulsy. As I have stated before all of the new signings bar Charlton are internationals of one level or another and have all played at a reasonably high level.

Infact Worthington even gave you a reason for the rough start of the two scandanavians in that for the first month or so of the season they hardly set foot in Norfolk due to internationals. And then all have had injuries at one point or another.

Like a previous player has said, first of all we needed depth, and we got quality as well as depth, the problem is that they all became the depth when they got injured.

Charlton isnt actually a die hard centre back. He has played most of his career as left back and in the last couple of games we needed speed not experience. Plus he has also just come back from injury.

No, all of the signings were made on a sound basis and consensous of footballing ability. If they havent lived up to that ability then they have to take a certain amount of the blame as well as the manager. After all he signed them on their previous exploits in the hope that they can re-create them at this club.

[Branston Pickle 3,667]

Sorry Chicken - I''m not sure who you are arguing with in the main, but you are factually wrong about Ashton: signing him pre-season would have been a step up of one division not two...if you recall, we played his side Crewe on our last game of the promotion season - a season in which he scored 19 goals in 44 appearances.  To have bought him pre-season may have been a gamble, but probably worth it.

You say we had a good run up to Christmas: really? December''s results were: beaten at home to a very poor Fulham, we beat Bolton, then lost to Chelsea, Spurs, Middlesbrough.  3pts out of 15 and 11 goals conceded.  Is that a good run?!  The fact is that, since about the 10th game of the season, our defence has been poor - no clean sheet since October 16.  To say we didn''t need a defender in the transfer window is madness, by the end of Jan we had not kept a clean sheet in 17 games.  It is now 22 games.

Maybe we had a straight choice of a good striker or a good defender, I don''t know - but at the time of the transfer window, I can''t help but think that a £3m defender would have made survival much more likely.  Since then we have let in 12 in 5 games - there''s no striker in the world that could score enough to cope with that.

I still stand by my original comments - as with you, I think our signings have been good ones, and we have been unlucky in that some have not been able to have as big an impact as we''d like, through injury; but that doesn''t mean we couldn''t have done things differently.

[3pmkickoff 0]

Bottom line, the signings this season just haven''t worked in the majority of cases because it looks like they were bought to make up the numbers rather than significantly improve the first 11. I''m surprised the club hasn''t looked at the scouting system currently in place as in recent years the bad signings have far outweighed the good.

Charlton - For 250K he''s been a solid utility player. We seemed to be a lot more safe at the back when he was playing.

Safri - Worthy said part of the reason we signed him was because he had a strong shot, if that was the case then one goal to his name for Coventry would seem to suggest they weren''t on target. Whenever he''s played from the start though I''ve liked him but hasn''t been given a chance to get a run going in the team.

Jonson - As expected wasn''t fit at start as he had no pre-season. Now nearly six months on, he''s a big disappointment. Good defensively but as an attacking option we saw more threat from Mark Rivers.

Helveg - Again, very little pre-season. Though he done okay in first two games but wasn''t given a chance to get up to speed and then suffered by being played in emergency midfield role. Looked quality against Liverpool.

Ward/Gallagher - Reserve keepers as expected but both decent signings for small layout.

Bentley -  Far too much hype and expectation place upon him. When put in perspective he''s a talent but with very little first team experience and it was foolish to think he could make a big difference.

Doherty - Pretty shocking for Spurs last season. Has improved with every game but it looks like he was bought to play up front in the vain hope that he might do the job.

Stuart - Looked ok but not fit, could come good in run-in.

Ashton - Excellent, a player we can''t really lose with. Seems sensible, has talent and as he improves, the team improves and I''m sure that on the day he eventually leaves the club it will be for a lot more than we paid for him.

But hindsight is a wonderful thing and we wouldn''t be having this discussion if we were now sitting comfortably.