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Let’s just concentrate on the first 45 minutes – far better that way.

15th August 2007 By theexpert Leave a Comment

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For all the positives that emerged, Saturday's performance at Preston was still worrying it has to be said.

Despite the admirable defending and energy and bite that permeated throughout the side, the manner in which City set their stall out to make themselves difficult to break down meant that they were only ever going to take a maximum of one point from the encounter at Deepdale.

True, Norwich did everything and more that was asked of them from a defensive point of view – and that in itself is certainly no bad thing when you consider some of the instances last season when the team basically fell apart once put under pressure.

But you can only ever win Championships and cups by taking the game to your opponents on more occasions than not.

So despite the arguments that this was against League Two opposition, on home soil and with a more than adequately strong enough starting line-up to get the job done, considering City's chronic dearth of attacking intent on Saturday, to paraphrase the tag line from a famous credit card company, ' This'll do nicely…'

But just hang on a moment, because lest we should forget, City don't always tend to do things by the book.

Had this not been the case, then a five-nil half-time lead would not necessarily have had to become the six, seven, eight, nine or ten goals that some people would have been expecting last night, but it certainly wouldn't have finished at 5-2, and with the Canaries a mind-boggling parody of their supreme earlier selves.

To go from so very, very good in one half to? well? so half-soaked in another? Inexplicable really.

No wonder the supporters didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the end of it all.

If lessons can be learned though then all well and good. Because had the Canaries indeed turned the first half goal-fest into something resembling a cricket score then they just might have lulled themselves into a false sense of security for Saturday's visit of Southampton.

And then everything could have well and truly blown up in their faces as a result.

But as it stands, Barnet's spirited comeback – and equally importantly the manner in which the Canaries rolled out the red carpet and allowed it to happen – just might prove to be a blessing in disguise seeing as those second half flaws have now been exposed.

Let's hope so.

At the start of any campaign it's vital to look for the positives in any performance ? good or bad ? otherwise you'll basically dig your own grave if you wallow in your own failings, and suffice to say that we had positives arriving by the bucket load in those opening 45 minutes.

Jamie Cureton grabbed a goal with his first touch in competitive action on his ?second? debut for the Canaries and then soon followed it with another, Chris Brown was once again impressive leading the line while Simon Lappin continued to look assured in midfield and scored a cracking goal himself.

And at the back, City looked comfortably on course for a second clean sheet.

So we'll leave it at that, shall we?

Because it's a pretty safe bet that Peter Grant would have turned the air blue in the dressing room afterwards, and let his players know in no uncertain circumstances of exactly what he thought of their second-half display.


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