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Pete Raven

New post from our brilliant new blogger 'Give Hughton a break'

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Good read, expanding on a point made about the "shortevity" of impulse appointed managers it''s worth noting that of the seven managers appointed last year in this league (Andre Villa Boas, Alex McLeish, Martin Jol, Martin O''Neill, Mark Hughes, Terry Connor, Roberto Di Matteo) only the two Martins remain in position, that''s a very high failure rate for managers charged with applying a quick fix who fill positions vacated involuntarily or increasingly on the whim of a rich owner.

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Well written and pretty much spot on. It will be ignored by a few that need to read it sadly.

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Clearly a rational thinker and a good writer. It''s refreshing to see an opinion piece that isn''t watered down on here...

One thing caught my eye... "where callers are carefully selected for their feckless fickleness because it creates immediate arguments and melodrama"

...so does this confirm that Wiz is the Archant Ad Revenue Bot we all suspected?!

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Not sure who this "all" is that SDP talks about. Anyway someone has got to put forward a different view:

Are you suffering from a nasty case of Fickle? Symptoms include booing Chris Hughton’s substitutions, sweaty outrage, unstoppable and furious shaking of your head, uncontrolled spluttering, an acute paranoia that football managers are out to spite you and occasional lapses into shouting random swear words. Why use one adjective when a whole thesaurus is available?

Don''t worry, you''re not alone: we''re all  You speak for yourself afflicted at some point. Thankfully, if you support Norwich, there is a simple cure. All it involves is thinking of three words: Grant. Roeder. Gunn: Those are names rather than words a clueless succession of increasing ineptitude Really? Roeder who took over when we were rock-bottom and saved us was more inept than Grant, who got us into that mess? that seemed destined to end with Neil Doncaster unveiling Alan Partridge as Norwich’s new manager (if only). Yes, always good for a laugh to throw Neil Doncaster''s name in there. It covers up flaws in an argument. Let''s imagine he would have appointed a fictional character, ho ho!

From the moment we had to grin and bear it while Delia Smith gin and bared it at half-time against Manchester City in 2005, Norwich City became less a football club and more a punchline. Only to idiots, and Delia''s half-time performance had nothing to do with our decline, which was caused - yes- by some bad managerial choices but also by financial circumstances outside our control and which need to be mentioned in any sensible analysis of our barren years, and yet are absent from this piece. We were like a once-minor pop star reduced to opening new branches of Poundland, lamenting to anyone who would listen that “I used to be someone, man”.

So it’s important to remember just how bad those days were. Especially if you’re one of the growing number Where is the evidence for that? of Norwich fans dissatisfied with Hughton. Every time you moan about Norwich drawing 0-0 at home, just remind yourself about losing 3-0 at Plymouth Argyle. And if you want a good whinge when Hughton picks one up front against Sunderland on Sunday, think back to when we didn’t score for six successive games in 2007-08.

For four seasons we signed up ineffective loan player after ineffective loan player Highly questionable in various ways. All clubs use the loan system. Some of our loans (Huckerby, Crouch, Bertrand) were successes. And the only time we really went loan crazy was for a season and a bit under Roeder, and even then it can be argued that it saved us from relegation, given the load of tosh he had inherited from Grant. like a tramp picking up fag ends from the pavement and failing to roll them together. In contrast, Hughton has brought in Snodgrass, Bassong, Turner and Bunn – four invaluable, settled signings (and not a Jamie Cureton in sight). Are you seriously comparing the increasingly good financial position under which Hughton (and Lambert before him) have been able to operate in the transfer market with the severe constraints that limited the actions of Grant and Roeder in particular?

Yet people still boo at Carrow Road. Let''s put our fickleness into context. Stoke fans have given Tony Pulis five boo-free seasons as manager in the Premier League. Five years of watching the worst style of football outside of Twickenham.
Only now have the boos started to mount at the Britannia. And it’s understandable: Pulis has bought some quality midfield playmakers, but still insists on his team bypassing them and aiming for Peter Crouch’s head. It’s like buying your baby an expensive pushchair and wheeling them around in a shopping trolley instead.

Hughton, meanwhile, has steered an average squad to 14th in the table. We are one missed spot kick away from being 10th. He’s masterminded wins over United, Arsenal and Everton, and draws against Tottenham. Yet he gets booed for substituting a clearly tired Kai Kamara for Luciano Becchio on Saturday.

It’s easy to be fickle. It’s pushed onto the fan by headlines asking when an underperforming coach is going to get the chop and it’s driven home by betting companies offering odds on the next manager to lose his job. It sells newspapers, Sky subscriptions and betting slips. It pulls in listeners to phone-in shows, where callers are carefully selected for their feckless fickleness because it creates immediate arguments and melodrama.

Club owners are also to blame for perpetuating the culture of fickleness. A good point, at last When Brian Clough lasted only 44 days in 1974 at Leeds United (and remarkably failed to sell any of the Leeds players to Norwich) it became infamous for its rarity. But snap sackings are becoming commonplace. In the last three years we''ve had Henning Berg last 57 days at Blackburn, Alex McCleish 40 days at Forest and Paul Hart 28 days at QPR. And just look at the mess those three clubs are in. This season, McDermott and Nigel Adkins have been sacked, it appears, for getting their clubs to perform as well as could be justifiably expected.

So, seriously, unless you truly believe we should be guaranteed a top-10 place and be playing the kind of one-touch stuff that would make Barcelona wee themselves with envy, give Hughton a break. Some of our football might be more tiki-tractor than tiki-taka I am sure that lead balloon bit of word play sounded fine in the head but he’s working with what he has available. Today there are six teams worse than us in the Premier League. Four years ago there was only two teams worse than us in the Championship. Remind yourself of that and you might just be cured.

This blog just plays to the gallery. A good opinion piece makes a convincing case for the unpopular or unexpressed point of view.

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Well done Purple. But because it''s a blog the guy won''t debate his opinion. There''s quite a few precious posters on here who''d be better off writing blogs...

 

 

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[quote user="nutty nigel"]

Well done Purple. But because it''s a blog the guy won''t debate his opinion. There''s quite a few precious posters on here who''d be better off writing blogs...

 

 

[/quote]

 

He may or he may not, nutty. I should say I tend not to comment on blogs, because most of them are written by amateurs. This writer is being put forward as a professional. In that case professional standards apply.

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[quote user="PurpleCanary"][quote user="nutty nigel"]

Well done Purple. But because it''s a blog the guy won''t debate his opinion. There''s quite a few precious posters on here who''d be better off writing blogs...

 

 

[/quote]

 

He may or he may not, nutty. I should say I tend not to comment on blogs, because most of them are written by amateurs. This writer is being put forward as a professional. In that case professional standards apply.

[/quote]

 

Well even the columnists aren''t duty bound to be objective. Richard Balls was ridiculously OTT when it came to Worthy but it was only an opinion piece. My issue is always that many people take opinion as fact if it''s published in a paper.

 

 

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A very long winded way of saying that things could be worse, remember one week in the Championship, so shut up and be greatful.

 

 

As a reply I would ask since when has the worst period in the last 50 years or so been our sole benchmark to measure ourselves against ?

 

 

So my suggestion to this chap would be to stick to writing about cricket.

 

 

ps Snodgrass was being lined up way before Hughton arrived

 

 

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It''s a shame it hasn''t reached the Oxbridge level of English some posters possess, or excellence of football knowledge for that matter, but some of us lesser people enjoyed it.

Maybe, for future reference, the blogger should cram it full of pomposity and know-it-allisms. That always goes down well.

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City1st or maybe something original, that often helps

Give it a try yourself. I am sure we''d all love to comment on an original piece of prose written by you.

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piece of prose, hey ?

 

there'' a phrase you don''t often see these days

 

sadly there is not the facility for commenting on anything I get paid to write

 

nevermind Herman, can''t have everything in life can we ?

 

 

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I''ve never tended to buy my opinions at newsstands so I don''t feel any need to acquire them from blogs.

 

This reads too much like the average ''Canary Call'' pundit.

 

You may as well be grateful to the NHS in the light of the bubonic plague.

 

I will admit I am nervous because history has seen Norwich City tailspin before and know that one good win would settle things down nicely. This Norwich side going forwards has some serious issues and the midfield is weak. We have played too few players so lack squad cohesion and match fitness and therefore rely upon very few players who, when over-played do what they did after the good run of results.

 

I am not a complacent individual but I know the dangers of expectation too. Hughton has a way to go to convince me he is adequate after the tenure of the most effective NCFC manager of my lifetime but I sincerely hope he does.

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[quote user="Herman "]I am sure we''d all love to comment on an original piece of prose written by you.[/quote].... that wasn''t based on belittling other people for daring to have a differing opinion.

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[quote user="City1st"] 

sadly there is not the facility for commenting on anything I get paid to write

[/quote]Why, are you the crayon monitor?

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