How Has Hughton Turned Norwich Around?

[ron obvious 1,502]

Just to add that there''s nothing wrong with quoting facts & figures, they can be both illuminating & entertaining; what I take issue with is those who believe one particular set of figures conclusively prove a case they are trying to make. It just ain''t so.

[nutty nigel 7,533]

Well now Yankee, City1st will rightly tell you that we appear to play that way because we defend zonally. In fact we pretty much play zonally with players restricted, some would say shackled, by boundaries. It''s certainly not what we were used to under Lambert but it is what many of our players are used to. Particularly many of those from the continent. The other side of the coin was Grant Holt who had probably never played that way until Hughton came to Norwich and certainly didn''t like it. However like it or not it gives us our best chance of staying in this league. The top teams with the best players have undone us. But they''d have undone us anyway. Just like they did in Lambert''s season.

 

When we played West Ham we came into the game following a paticularly difficult week where we''d lost two games in Manchester a total of 11-0, in fact the previous games were 0-7, 0-4, 1-4 and 1-3 punctuated only by a 0-0 with Cardiff where we''d played well and got nothing. To compound it in that run we lost Tettey and RVW to injuries and Hooper wasn''t yet anywhere near being PL match sharp. I feared the worst when we conceded early but we came back to win the game 3-1 which showed tremendous character. In fact we''ve won 7 points from losing positions this season which also augers well.

 

Spot on about taking players time to get back. We are extremely lucky that we have Hooper and RVW. And that puts us in a stronger position to get RVW properly fit than we were when we needed Hooper to perform immediately. I believe we are beginning to see the best of Hooper now but we certainly weren''t in his first few games. But like I said the Tettey situation worries me because he''s unlikely to be properly fit until much later in the season.

 

We will always need strengthening. If we don''t then we will be relegated. We have to continually strengthen just to stand still. The icing on the cake would be to have a couple come through the academy. Oh for a Craig Bellamy.....