Norwich City v Leicester City(away) Saturday 27th February.

[Fox Force 5]

It was gutting after we'd played so well, and galling to have to put up with the Leicester fans, who'd been like church mice since halfway through the second half, giving it the big one.

System worked well and restricted Leicester to a couple of half chances but the goal was poor, two CBs attracted to the ball but not getting tight, but I wonder whether it would have happened had Naismith stayed on as he'd done a good job of providing some cover on our left. I have to say I was surprised by Jarvis coming on rather than another central midfielder, but if we'd nicked a winner Alex would have been a hero. Jerome's missed was crucial, and for all his work he's not Premier standard. Awful first touch, poor passing and on four separate occasions managed to be offside when the defence needed an outlet ball to relieve the pressure.

Alex has made mistakes, but he's been let down by a largely sub standard squad and should definitely stay. This knee jerk "sack the manager" stuff is a big part of what's wrong with football these days and why clubs don't build teams any more. The signing of promising youngsters suggest to me that the board will back him for the long term and I applaud that even if it means some short term pain.

To be fair, you made it such a boring game, there was nothing really to cheer. both team had one great game winning chance, Jerome missed yours Ulloa scored ours, its as simple as that.

 

[morty]

To be fair, you made it such a boring game, there was nothing really to cheer. both team had one great game winning chance, Jerome missed yours Ulloa scored ours, its as simple as that.

So sorry we didn't entertain you 

 

[Beauseant]

Sadly that emphasizes the sort of crap we had to put up with post match. Leicester were awful but rather than accept we actually played quite well as some of their more cultured supporters had the grace to do we got this sort of nonsense from many of the bull necked shaven headed scum we encountered.

You're having a great season knocking over the big boys and their arrogant fans, shame that some of you are starting to morph into the same mould.

 

[Fox Force 5]

So sorry we didn't entertain you 

You had to play how you did to get a result, we've done it plenty of times, so i don't begrudge you doing that at all. I was just responding to the guy that said we were like mice all game, the reason for that was you made it boring to watch and didn't really make noise yourselves.

The irony is on the rare occasion your fans made some noise it was to goad us about the lack of atmosphere, which resulted in us making more noise and pushed our team on to win the game.

 

[Beauseant]

You had to play how you did to get a result, we've done it plenty of times, so i don't begrudge you doing that at all. I was just responding to the guy that said we were like mice all game, the reason for that was you made it boring to watch and didn't really make noise yourselves.

The irony is on the rare occasion your fans made some noise it was to goad us about the lack of atmosphere, which resulted in us making more noise and pushed our team on to win the game.

Good to see you've carefully avoided the point about your fans arrogance.......

 

[GJP]

Alex has made mistakes, but he's been let down by a largely sub standard squad and should definitely stay. 

I'm not writing off AN but if the players can be sub-standard I don't see how the same doesn't or can't apply to AN.

We might be higher up the league with better players. But we also might be higher up the league with a better manager.

 

[Canaryboy]

We might be higher up the league with better players. But we also might be higher up the league with a better manager.

I don't think we can expect to be higher in the league, I never bought into the idea that we had a Premier League standard squad last season like many people seemed to like saying. 

We had a squad which had failed to survive in the Premier League, and then lost at least two Premier League quality players.  

17th = success

18th = failure

That's my barometer for this season.

If we finish 18th I think that is the time to perform an autopsy and think about whether Alex Neil is the right man for the job here. I think that will depend on quite a few factors, particularly:

1. The board being honest about what happened in the summer transfer window. Were executives to blame for our failure to strengthen, particularly defensively, or is Alex Neil in any way to blame for this? E.g. is the failure to land a centre back a board/backroom failure, or just the result of circumstances, or did Alex Neil not press the urgency of this position?
2. Do the bulk of the better players have faith in Alex Neil and want to stay and put things right, or is everybody rushing to hand in transfer requests? That will be a fairly good indicator of whether he has the support of the dressing room or not. If Johnny Howson sticks in a transfer request then that would be a clear indicator that he doesn't believe we can come straight back up, because a yo-yo team isn't really beneath his level, he's not going to be on the radar of a West Ham or Southampton.
3. What would the alternative be, can we afford them, and are they interested? If you are content with your home then you don't sell it unless you see lots of other nice homes on the market that you have the budget to buy. Any decision to change Alex Neil ought to be a decision made because we've identified one or more people that we'd like to give the job to, rather than sacking him for the sake of it and then scrambling for a replacement.

At this moment in time there aren't really any managers that I'm desperate for us to go and grab. If we do change manager though it would be nice if we actually hired an experienced manager with a strong CV for once, we haven't done that since Bruce Rioch two decades ago. Nigel Pearson would probably be my choice. 

 

[Din]

Good performance overall, but ultimately, as has happened a number of times this season, we turn off for 1 move and get punished. Lots of encouraging signs though, we dealt with Vardy extremely well throughout, defensively looked solid, and there were quite a few good performances. I thought the two down the right hand side, Redmond and Pinto were impressive. Still a few question marks over Pinto defensively but all in all he had a good game. Don't think anyone really played poorly, although Jerome will be disappointed as he should've done better on a couple of occasions with goal-scoring opportunities. The 3 at the back system worked pretty well though, and I'd like to see us use it against Chelsea tomorrow.

If we can play like that in the games we've got coming up against some of the teams around us then I can see us picking up points certainly, however with us we always seem to find a way to mess things up.