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Cureton waits for the axeman to cometh. ‘We’ve all got to watch our backs now..’

12th November 2007 By Latest News Leave a Comment

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City striker Jamie Cureton warned everyone to keep one eye over their shoulder in the next fortnight as new Canary boss Glenn Roeder prepares to rip the current Norwich squad up and start again.

Hard on the heels of Saturday's miserable 3-0 defeat at Plymouth, a furious Roeder revealed that he now knows all he needs to know about the team that Peter Grant built – just what it can and cannot do.

It can, for example, give away soft goals at a drop of a hat; likewise, it cannot impose itself physically on the vast majority of Championship teams. Hence Roeder's forceful assertion that he needs new players, ASAP.

Cureton didn't disagree after being left a virtual spectator for much of this weekend's trip to Home Park as the level of service to City's top-scorer plumbed to new lows.

Chris Martin barely won a header as his latest opportunity to impress came and went, while minus Darren Huckerby and Adam Drury Norwich's left-hand side spent their afternoon chasing Lee Martin's shadow.

“He's now seen three games, he's got a break and I'm sure he's going to change it,” said Cureton, as the Canaries continue to hurtle towards League One at an alarming rate.

“The manager has said he wants fresh faces in; he doesn't think it's good enough – so people have to watch their backs. And that applies to everyone that's been playing – it hasn't been great,” added the 32-year-old with this weekend's break for the latest round of Euro2008 games granting Roeder the chance to pull very last contact out of his book and slam something, anything, into the dishevelled mess that he's inherited.

“He's now got an opportunity to bring people in – whether people will have to go as well, I don't know.

“But at some stage we have to get a team out there that's good enough to win football matches. And obviously that's down to the boss. And if he feels that people aren't good enough here then he's obviously going to make decisions on them over the next two weeks.”

Cureton was offering little by way of defence as Roeder sharpened his axe in the background. “We've had whatever many games now and we can't win.

“We're getting beat and we don't look like we're going to win games so something has to change,” said the City striker, whose deft little lob to claim a share of the derby spoils against free-scoring Ipswich has been the only ray of light of late.

City's recent run of two points from their last 33 tells its own story.

“He's had three games where he's tried to turn things round with what he's got and we haven't been able to do that. We've produced one performance – which was in a derby.

“So he's probably looked at everyone in these three games and thought: 'Right, do I need them or don't I? And what can they offer me?'

“So everyone needs to watch their backs a bit because he's going to be bringing people in to rake our places. And if he doesn't feel you're good enough, then it's going to be out of the door…”

Saturday's 'efforts' weren't quite on the Wolves (a) scale – Darel Russell would drop a 25-yarder onto the bar and Cureton himself would dig an injury time shot against a post – but it was still a scratchy, nothing of a game in which Plymouth helped themselves to three, easy goals. But for a linesman's flag and some wayward finishing, it could have been five or six.

The sight of the newly-arrived Martin Taylor limping off with a pulled groin before the half-hour mark suggested which way this latest ill-wind was blowing.

“I don't think it helped – he's obviously a big player for us. A physical presence and coming down here, you need those sort of players about,” said Cureton, as teenager Michael Spillane found himself back in the firing line at centre-half.

“It sort of shook us a bit and obviously Spillane's had to drop back. And they're powerful lads there – even Barry (Hayles). He muscles people around – he just caused havoc and we didn't deal with it.”

City were, in fairness, only one goal adrift at the break. An improvement of sorts, albeit they were three down within five minutes of the restart.

“We thought, well, even though we haven't played well, it's 1-0 – one goal and everything changes again. In five minutes we're 2-0 down – and again it's someone coming in, unmarked and having a free header. And we never seem to get them going the other way,” said Cureton, as Pilgrims full-back Paul Connolly helped himself to a free header.

There wouldn't be anyone within half a dozen yards of David Norris two minutes later as he smashed home the killer third from the edge of the City box.

“As a team we just feel that they're easy goals. He (Connolly) hasn't had to split his head open or anything – he's touched it in. And you're fighting a losig battle again then. You give someone 2-0 and from then on it was like an onslaught.

“They could have scored at will it seemed. They had chance after chance; they obviously got another one and you feel you just want to get some pride back. And once it went to three that was probably all we had left – to try and keep the score down.”

It was that defensive frailty – and that age-old inability to hold the centre ground in midfield – that left the Canaries so far adrift at the foot of the Championship table.

“It's poor goals again – I think that's the problem,” said Cureton. “We need to try and keep ourselves in games – and give us a chance of winning one. You can't give people two's and three's. It's not good enough.

“We just feel that every goal we're conceding at the moment is down to human error. I wouldn't say that anyone has cut us apart.”

Not that he was taking the forward department out of the blame game.

“As an attacking force we're not really doing a lot either. I think I had my first shot in the 93rd minute,” he admitted.

“I'm gutted I haven't scored because I think I should have, but it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. But that's the sort of pattern of play at the moment – we're conceding sloppy goals and we're not creating anything.”


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