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The end justifies the means....

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....after all, the only priority this season was to remain in the Premier League, a task made rather more difficult with the exodus of a management team that knew how the squad ticked.

This appears within Norwich''s grasp as they stutter through 2013 keeping a reasonable distance above the danger zone.

9 clean sheets out of 29 games is clearly a massive turnaround and a commendable achievement,doubly so with Ruddy''s absence. But so much rests on the presence of Bassong. Missing from both Liverpool fiascos, he will probably win POTS by a country mile.

But at what cost?

Goals, obviously. Of those 9 clean sheets, Norwich have only scored in 3 of them. They have scored more than one goal in a match on only 6 occasions - that is close to 80% of games.

Having stuck mainly with a limited number of squad members for most of the season, many of the squad have regressed. We are no nearer knowing whether Bennett x2, Fox, Butterfield, Tierney,Barnett, Surman or Jackson can really cut it at this level, no doubt many supporters have made up their own minds.

There has been very little cutting edge going forward. Holt isn''t the forward of the past three seasons. Snodgrass has probably been the stand-out player, but this is mainly due to a small purple patch throughout December. This coincided with a glimpse of form from Pilkington, which has been sporadic at best.

Norwich''s results since the turn of the year flatters them. Without the ten minutes of uncharacteristic drive and passion at the end of the Everton game, Norwich would have scored 2 goals in 9 games. 4 goals is still a miserable return and representative of relegation form.

In that same time, QPR have scored 8, Reading 13, Wigan 11, Aston Villa 13, Southampton 13, Newcastle 12 and Sunderland 11. Just as well Norwich''s defence has tightened up, because if we were to go a goal down, there is only a 20% or less chance we could win the game.

Becchio was brought in on the January window to help address this problem. Having scored 19 goals for Leeds up until January, he was no doubt bought for his confidence and form, not one for the future. The KK hype has over shadowed him, and since their arrival our goal return has remained at a paltry 2 goals in 10 minutes throughout 7 1/2 hours of football.

Having just played one of the least in-form teams at home on Saturday, Norwich travel to the most out-of-form team in the PL next Saturday. It will be a good measure of how the rest of the season will run its course.

Finishing 17th will meet with pre-season targets, but will be a massive disappointment from here-on in. It will mean finishing below two of Southampton, Villa or Wigan. The woeful goal scoring returns so far this year suggest this cannot be discounted.

Norwich should have enough to see them over the line, but Hughton''s got a heelluva lot of work to do turn NCFC into an established Premier League team.

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Hoots has worked miracles with our sieve of a defence, give him time and he''ll get the attack sorted too. So shall we give him some time?

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hes had time, plenty of it, all this rubbish about sorting out the defence doesnt matter, goals WIN games, norwich dont score goals and its terrible to watch.New manager or not surely success is based on league position, finish as high or higher than last season and then fair play to him and i look forward to seeing what he brings in during the summer, but i will hazard a guess next seasons line up will have a team of hard working 6 foot cart horses in it and it will be the same cr@p all over again, we are the new stoke, many will see that as being successful :(

truth is this club wont go any further forward from a style/football perspective without a diferent manager and some epic arab/russian investment, and that wont ever happen while delia has the reigns because ''they aint local boyo''

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Which Arab or Russian is going to buy us anyway? Norwich is still growing, but is far from a thriving major City yet. Who would want to see us sell ourselves to one of those either?As for being the new Stoke. lmao. FFS. I hope we survive year on year like them, but the football we play isn''t like theirs. We don''t have a bunch of giant monsters smashing people all over the pitch and we won''t get any in summer either. Did you not see who was on Hughton''s list? RVW and Hooper are not Stoke-style targets. I''m hoping the link to Olsson is true as well as he''s the kind of pacey full-back I''d love to see here.

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" Hoots has worked miracles with our sieve of a defence, give him time and he''ll get the attack sorted too.

So shall we give him some time? "

If, as still could happen, we were to go down; would you still give him time ?

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[quote user="Yellow Rose of Texas"]" Hoots has worked miracles with our sieve of a defence, give him time and he''ll get the attack sorted too.

So shall we give him some time? "

If, as still could happen, we were to go down; would you still give him time ?[/quote]So you expect the bottom 3 to almost double their tally from the first 28 games and get 40 points?LOL

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"So you expect the bottom 3 to almost double their tally from the first 28 games and get 40 points?"

No, but the bottom three teams don''t have to overtake us, just one of the bottom three plus the teams betwen us and them.

Newcastle are now above us after a last minute win, Sunderland will be above us if they beat us next week. We play Wigan away next...

I accept that it''s not likely, but if it did happen, the question remains; would you give him more time?

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[quote user="technika"]
truth is this club wont go any further forward from a style/football perspective without a diferent manager and some epic arab/russian investment, and that wont ever happen while delia has the reigns because ''they aint local boyo''
[/quote]

We are exactly where we are now because Delia will not let ''some epic arab/russian investment'' anywhere near our football club. For every success that foreign ownership brings there and they are few and far between are a dozen failures from Portsmouth on the south coast to Hearts in Scotland. Foreign owners have caused upset virtually at every club they can get their grubby little hands on.

 

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[quote user="Yellow Rose of Texas"]" Hoots has worked miracles with our sieve of a defence, give him time and he''ll get the attack sorted too.

So shall we give him some time? "

If, as still could happen, we were to go down; would you still give him time ?[/quote]Even if we''re relegated I''d be tempted to keep him, the guy just oozes class imo.

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[quote user="Mister Chops"][quote user="Yellow Rose of Texas"]" Hoots has worked miracles with our sieve of a defence, give him time and he''ll get the attack sorted too. So shall we give him some time? " If, as still could happen, we were to go down; would you still give him time ?[/quote]

Even if we''re relegated I''d be tempted to keep him, the guy just oozes class imo.
[/quote]

 

This will go way above most heads Mister C....whoooooosh ! [:D]

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I see what you did there chopsy!

You know I wanted Holloway and I was wrong...Hughton is the way forward.

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[quote user="TIL 1010"]

[quote user="technika"]
truth is this club wont go any further forward from a style/football perspective without a diferent manager and some epic arab/russian investment, and that wont ever happen while delia has the reigns because ''they aint local boyo''
[/quote]

We are exactly where we are now because Delia will not let ''some epic arab/russian investment'' anywhere near our football club. For every success that foreign ownership brings there and they are few and far between are a dozen failures from Portsmouth on the south coast to Hearts in Scotland. Foreign owners have caused upset virtually at every club they can get their grubby little hands on.

 

[/quote]

In many respects that view is to be applauded when we see what has happened to some clubs with foreign ownership. However we might well wonder what will happen to their shares when the inevevitable happens and they go the mighty stadium in the sky.

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''All this rubbish about sorting the defence doesn''t matter''

I''d say it does matter when we are sitting 9 points clear of the bottom three with nine games left. Its clearly been a massive factor in us staying away from the dogfight at the bottom.

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@bagpuss

city have a worse goal difference now than they did after all 38 games last season

he hasnt improved the defence, its nonsense,its certainly different, but not better, and definitely not better going forward. The whole team sits deeper and are taking less risks so the defence gets a bit more support, but its also why they dont score the goals to win games. I suspect (and hope) they wont concede as many as last year (it would have to be about 2 a game for the next 9) but ill hazard a guess it wont be far off last seasons total goals againsthes traded off any attacking flair and threat and swapped it for a not much better defence and negative boring performancesweve scored 27 goals this season, theres 9 games left, last season city finished with 52 goals, you really think they are going to get even close to that ? im really struggling to see how hughtons method is ''better'', especially given that the general consensus is that the squad is stronger as well

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It''s more a case that the means will determine the end. that if we continue to play thsi way points will become harder and harder to come by, which will lead us to achieving a far lower total than we are capalbe of.

 

Elsewhere in other threads you will have that meaningless sh ite " a work in progress" being trotted out. A "that would be an ecumenical matter'' (Father Ted) of the football world. As if somehow teams/squads never evolve and this is some strange metamophisis taht is carried out once in every decade and us leser mortals should grin and bear it because it will all come good at some point. that is when this ''work inprogesses ceases'' and the squad remains as it is for infinitum, we have to suppose. As much bollox as the other old bit of fanny that we have to watch crap football because if we bow and scrape enough we will stumble over the finish line (once held to be some magical 40 points) and again all will be well.

 

The suggestions are it will not be. The midfield and attack are woeful and it is pretty plain to see for all - and pretty plain to see why if anyone care to look. It is not simply about getting in the right players. Lambert inherited a squad that had not only been relegated but had been hammered1-7 at home. With virtually no real change in players we started winning and climbing the table. There was no talk of ''work in progress'' or similar cliched twaddle. What there was, was a new mentality. A winning mentality. We don''t have that now.

 

Watch our games and you will see the same faults week after week. They have the ball and we don''t close them down. We sit off their players, we allow them time in front of the box whilst we back pedal. We have the ball and we don''t offer choices to the player with the ball.  We relied too long on a trick that worked for a few games and was quickly found out and left us with little else ie get the player to fall over in front of the opponent just outside the box, then lob a free kick into either someone on the edge of the box or to Bassong on the far post.

 

Good players do not become bad players that quick. Something is wrong and that cannot be explained or excused by relying on vacuous cliches. Nor by other burying their head in the sand. I believe we have the players and the players with enough commitment to be doing far, far better. I also thik that the same board who pushed us hard enough to get us where we were in May 2009 will continue that push - this is not good enough.

 

 

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Big investment doesn''t always = big success.Sometimes like already mentioned it can mean a big drop in form and club standings in the English game.Be careful what you wish for...

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I don''t buy into this ''big investment'' theory.It doesn''t guarantee you anything, as Man City and QPR have shown this season.

Staying in the PL this season is as close to mega riches as Norwich could wish for. Hughton will be applauded once this is achieved, but then the fears for next season will immediately come to the fore.

The home games against Newcastle, Fulham and Southampton should have been enough to secure PL football much earlier. They should have been targeted as ''win at all costs'', whereby winning two and losing one would have been infinitely better than the paltry return of no goals and three points.

They weren''t, hence the threat remains of being dragged into the mix, and the pressure builds as wins become more difficult to achieve.

Securing PL status early would have offered Hughton the opportunity to test more of his squad players, experiment, perhaps with different formations, and hopefully improve the clear current imbalance between defence and attack.

Of course we are better defensively this season. Any manager prepared to have close to two defensive midfielders - Tettey and Johnson sitting in front of two extremely competent centre-halves, are bound to concede fewer - it''s not rocket science.

PL football next season is all most Norwich City supporters were wishing for at the beginning of the season. There''s every reason to believe that the majority will be questioning ''the mean'' next season

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[quote user="technika"]hes had time, plenty of it, all this rubbish about sorting out the defence doesnt matter, goals WIN games, norwich dont score goals and its terrible to watch.New manager or not surely success is based on league position, finish as high or higher than last season and then fair play to him and i look forward to seeing what he brings in during the summer, but i will hazard a guess next seasons line up will have a team of hard working 6 foot cart horses in it and it will be the same cr@p all over again, we are the new stoke, many will see that as being successful :(

truth is this club wont go any further forward from a style/football perspective without a diferent manager and some epic arab/russian investment, and that wont ever happen while delia has the reigns because ''they aint local boyo''[/quote]
Plenty of time to change the entire squad? Behave. I will yet again point to an interview with Moyes over the weekend where he said that it is only in the past season or two that he has been able to go to the large majority of teams in the division and play in a more  attacking way, due to slowly improving the quality of players and evolving the style of play. Now Hughton has come in and sorted out the defence, I can see no reason why next season he won''t look to work on something such as ball retention or bring in some out and out pace up top etc. to help us add an extra element.
"New manager or not surely success is based on league position, finish as high or higher than last season and then fair play to him" - I think if you''ve ever paid attention to the premiership, it''s unusual for anyone outside of  the top 6 to finish in the exact same position season after season. I don''t think you can judge on exact position, but instead on ''area'' of the table - Champions league, Europa qualifying, midtable (8/9-14) lower midtable (15-17) and relegation zone. As long as we''re in about the same ''area'' as last season, I''ll be happy - and we currently are, and currently look like we will do.
As for your last paragraph, how has it got anything to do with management style? Truth is virtually every team in the country will see mid table in the prem as the pinnacle of their possible achievements. Getting any higher than that has very, very little to do with management style, and virtually everything to do with money. I would say about 85 of the 92 league clubs in England strive every season to be in a similar position to us. Even those above us in the league at the moment - other than the top 6 perhaps - would be happy with a 12th(ish) place finish in the prem at the start of most given seasons. 
I''m afraid some fans have got a very warped idea of how the premiership works. Very few teams continue to improve once they''re here. Stagnation in midtable is success. There might be a cup run every now and then, and maybe a one off season where you break into challenging for Europe, but generally speaking most teams get into the prem, and then either stagnate in mid table or go down again. 
Those of you who aren''t happy with mid table stagnation and want continuous season-after-season improvement in league position should, in the nicest possible way, go and support some lower league side who have the potential to climb the leagues. At Norwich mid table stagnation for the next 5 years will be a huge, huge success. If we can do that, then maybe in the next 5 - 10 years we may do as Fulham did a season or so ago and sneak into a European campaign, or have some success in the cup during that period. But what else are you expecting?

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I don''t think there are any (or certainly there aren''t many) fans who are not content with finishing mid table or who think we can somehow push on into the top 6.

Of the fans I speak to any current unhappiness revolves around 1 think and thats the negative style of play/tactics being employed at Carrow Road which are making watching us about as interesting as watching paint dry for long spells of matches. Obviously, if we stay up there will be many who will say we have only stayed up due to Hughton employing these tactics and making us "hard to beat" and to a degree there is some truth in that. However I also firmly believe, although it can;t be proven or quantified, that those same tactics and that inherrant caution have probably actually cost us quite a few points this season where we have drawn or lost games that were arguably there for the taking had we had more belief and imposed ourselves more on the opposition. QPR, West Ham, Fulham and Newcastle at home are all examples as was Reading away. Games where we settled for nil-nils but where we could in my view have harvested more points that would have made us almost safe by now.

For me, the ultimate example of our negative approach coming home to roost was at West Brom where having led for much of the first half and been comfortable (and on the back of a 10 match unbeaten run so high on confidence) we went into our shell and played for a draw. West Brom realised this, chucked on 3 attacking players and won the game. Since then they have continued to pick up points regularly whilst we are stumbling over the line.

I think we will stay up. If we do Hughton has done his job but he must change things next season or not only might we have a relegation battle on our hands again but crowds may well dwindle as well.

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I can''t see crowds dwindling because of the style of play. If some fans don''t like it and do give up their season tickets, then there is a blooming long list for those tickets to be snapped up.

I think any formation will have pros and cons. Yes we may have picked up a few extra points in some games had we gone more adventurous. Alternatively, we would probably have lost a few more points in some games had we done so. Looking at individual games and saying "had we done this we would have had more points" is never really a fair reflection of how well the team plays. It is how the tactics work over the entire season, and currently you can''t really argue with the return.

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And as for next season, I can see no reason to panic. Hughton''s tactics will probably have us finishing 13th-ish this season, we will strengthen in the summer, so why should we not finish 13th-ish again next year?

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The margins in playing this way are so small, we have squeaked wins and relied on quite some good fortune. In my CH must go thread I argue that we are not stagnating, we are getting worse as a team. The stats and the evidence on the pitch prove it. CH has been like this from his first pre-season friendly. I don''t see a Damascene transformation and I believe that our current crop of players are actually way better than this. Snods has a Scotland call up as does Wes for RoI.  Pilks is also on the fringes and Holt was being considered for England a few months ago!! I don''t buy this "we are full of league 1 players" stuff- they might not be Lionel Messis but they aren''t Andy Hughes''s either. The defence isn''t any better, we just have two extra midfielders in there sitting right in front of them.

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[quote user="City1st"]

It''s more a case that the means will determine the end. that if we continue to play thsi way points will become harder and harder to come by, which will lead us to achieving a far lower total than we are capalbe of.

 

Elsewhere in other threads you will have that meaningless sh ite " a work in progress" being trotted out. A "that would be an ecumenical matter'' (Father Ted) of the football world. As if somehow teams/squads never evolve and this is some strange metamophisis taht is carried out once in every decade and us leser mortals should grin and bear it because it will all come good at some point. that is when this ''work inprogesses ceases'' and the squad remains as it is for infinitum, we have to suppose. As much bollox as the other old bit of fanny that we have to watch crap football because if we bow and scrape enough we will stumble over the finish line (once held to be some magical 40 points) and again all will be well.

 

The suggestions are it will not be. The midfield and attack are woeful and it is pretty plain to see for all - and pretty plain to see why if anyone care to look. It is not simply about getting in the right players. Lambert inherited a squad that had not only been relegated but had been hammered1-7 at home. With virtually no real change in players we started winning and climbing the table. There was no talk of ''work in progress'' or similar cliched twaddle. What there was, was a new mentality. A winning mentality. We don''t have that now.

 

Watch our games and you will see the same faults week after week. They have the ball and we don''t close them down. We sit off their players, we allow them time in front of the box whilst we back pedal. We have the ball and we don''t offer choices to the player with the ball.  We relied too long on a trick that worked for a few games and was quickly found out and left us with little else ie get the player to fall over in front of the opponent just outside the box, then lob a free kick into either someone on the edge of the box or to Bassong on the far post.

 

Good players do not become bad players that quick. Something is wrong and that cannot be explained or excused by relying on vacuous cliches. Nor by other burying their head in the sand. I believe we have the players and the players with enough commitment to be doing far, far better. I also thik that the same board who pushed us hard enough to get us where we were in May 2009 will continue that push - this is not good enough.

 

 

[/quote]

I think you have misjudged the quality of our squad.

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[quote user="Tumbleweed"]The margins in playing this way are so small, we have squeaked wins and relied on quite some good fortune. In my CH must go thread I argue that we are not stagnating, we are getting worse as a team. The stats and the evidence on the pitch prove it. CH has been like this from his first pre-season friendly. I don''t see a Damascene transformation and I believe that our current crop of players are actually way better than this. Snods has a Scotland call up as does Wes for RoI.  Pilks is also on the fringes and Holt was being considered for England a few months ago!! I don''t buy this "we are full of league 1 players" stuff- they might not be Lionel Messis but they aren''t Andy Hughes''s either. The defence isn''t any better, we just have two extra midfielders in there sitting right in front of them.[/quote]
Do you truly believe the defence is no better than last season? You say we are getting worse "as a team", so let''s judge the defence not on individuals but as a whole team. 9 clean sheets this season (only Manchester clubs, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea have more), compared to 3 clean sheets last season. And if we do go on individuals, if you truly believe that Bassong and Turner are no better than Ward and Whitbread then I''m afraid I find it hard to take anything else you may say seriously at all.
The stats prove that we are 4 points worse off this season than last after 28 games. However, it is noticeable that every team between 10th and 15th this season has either 3 or 4 points less than 10th to 15th had last season. The bottom 5 have around 3 or 4 points more this season than last year. 
So use those stats how you like; does it mean we (along with a third of the rest of the league) have gotten 4 points worse than last year, does it mean that the bottom 5 have gotten 4 points better than last year? I would argue it really means that whilst the points may fluctuate by 4 or 5 points up or down each season, you tend to see the same patterns. You get 5 teams at the bottom who are a good 5 or 6 points adrift, then you get a run of 6 or 7 teams on virtually the same points, another group of perhaps 3 or 4 teams on the same points, then the usual top 6/European spots. That happened last season and it''s almost the same again this season. We''re in the same "group" of teams as we were at this stage last season, we''ve got the same amount of points as those other teams in that "group" and we''ve had three times more clean sheets already this season (with still almost a quarter of the season to go) than we had all of last season. I don''t see how that makes us "worse as a team", but can see entirely how that means we are "stagnating".

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Aggy- whether the defence is better or worse is a hard one. I agree totally that we have better players in the defence. We have also bolstered it by parking Johnson and Tettey in front of it thereby starving that area for the opposition. The problem is that we have had more stuffings and conceded nearly as many goals so it has only been partially successful. The result of the attention on the defence is that we have not had the service up front and clean sheets at the back are creating clean sheets from the strikers, so overall we seem to be struggling more as a result of that policy. The reason I think we are worse as a team  is summed up by many of the posts on the pink''un today and essentially comes down to having better players but being in a comparatively worse position playing poorer football. I feel much more nervous than last time- nicking victories here and there could dry out and others are starting to get some momentum, even Saints seem to have a bit more verve to them. We need something to happen in the summer to get our own momentum back.

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IMO we do have better defenders,  there is not one player from last seasons defensive squad that is better than this years or who has been missed. 

 

However we do not have a strong enough midfield to provide both a defensive shield to the back 4 (which every good defence needs) AND provide chances to the strikers.    Teams are only ever as good as their weakest point and CM is our achilles heel,  (along with enough pace up front)    We saw what happens when we play 442 - peer clubs such as Fulham, QPR, West Ham and Soton can over power us,  putting us on the back foot.

 

So while we have better defenders and the defence is more secure,  making us very hard to beat,  it has come at the cost of attacking play as a european top league high of six 0-0 games this season shows. 

 

I am confident (hopefull) that we will sign enough to be a different proposition come October

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The defence is definitely improved. I know the overall number of goals conceded hasn;t reduced but the number of and chances of keeping a clean sheet have and that for me is very important because in any game we keep a clean sheet we are guaranteed at least 1 point. The overall goals tally is somewhat misleading because basically half of those goals have come in 4 or 5 games and in all but one case Bassong wasn''t playing. When he and Turner play together then we basically keep a clean sheet every 3 games. What the stats really show about the defence is that it has improved but we are still short of decent cover at CB because as soon as Bassong is not there then we struggle!

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This seasons remitt = Stay up, anything better an extra bonus!

 

We look capable of finishing much higher than 17th!

 

The forward momentum was never going to continue this season otherwise we''d now be in the top 6!

 

Lambert knew all this and anyone with any sense will do as well!

 

If you want entertaining high goalscoring football you can watch it on your local park on a Sunday morning for free as many games at that level end up with about 6+ goals shared between the teams!

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"But what else are you expecting?"

 

err, a team taht looks like it wants to win a game and approaches games in nthe same mind set

 

This seasons remitt = Stay up, anything better an extra bonus!

 

absolute bo llox on stilts !

 

you can not aim to stay up - all you can do is aim to get the maximum number of points

 

unfortunately the method we have been using, pack the defense and hop to get a  breakaway goal from a freekick has been found out, hence the limited number of points and goals since we started to pay teams a second time

 

 

 

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