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It’s not so much a sinking feeling these days, more one of being all-but sunk.

3rd November 2008 By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

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Stan has had a lovely few days away from it all. Tucked snugly in an old mill in a beautiful village on the edge of Dartmoor he breathed in the clear Devon air and cleansed his body and soul as best he could during his short recuperative stay.

 
The mill's proximity to an excellent village pub undid some of the good work, but the intention of a Zen-like existence was there.

Unable to get a phone signal and with the TV reception equally fitful only intermittent news of the Fine City and it's not so fine football team filtered through. It was bliss.

The Derby result ultimately arrived and was greeted with a familiar shrug of the shoulders and sinking of the heart.

 
The subsequently-read match report revealed a 'classic' City performance; gutless and uninspired with the mere sniff of a hope thrown in somewhere in the middle.

The short clip of the game that Stan has now seen, shows slow-to-react and three-quarter-paced yellow shirts abjectly succumbing once more to 'the worst team in Premiership history'.

Unfortunately Stan was back in Norwich by Saturday afternoon and thus granted the privilege of being able to listen to the Burnley match unfold through the increasingly exasperated tones of Messrs Goreham and Adams.

The time away had done nothing to raise Stan's hopes of success. In fact, all it had done was to increase the indifference with which Stan listened.

The pre-match flurry of texts were telling in their pessimism. Absolutely no-one gave City a chance of a point, let alone a win, and if memory serves me right Stan can't even recall anyone being bold enough to predict that City would score. When the team sheet emerged the level of gloom merely deepened.

However many times Stan looked at that team it was impossible to imagine City coming out of the game with anything. It was weak, unbalanced and containing far too many players likely to hide like pansies when the Lancashire hoard's blood was raised.

 
Stan, amongst others, has made much of the importance of building a spine to any side, but as he looked at the team-sheet he could see nothing of the sort.

No big physical and mental presence in the middle. No target man with the quality to truly trouble defences and sadly no peripheral quality capable of making up for this short fall.

A year on and we haven't really come very far have we? Admittedly a Grant/Duffy side wouldn't have got close to massacring Wolves, but its in the darker corners of the Championship, in places such as Turf Moor and Pride Park, that teams are promoted or relegated. Unfortunately this side look far more capable of the latter.

The commentary told a now familiar story of a City side being bossed, bullied and, more worryingly, played into submission. Slow to close men down, weak in heart and limb, the result flattered City rather than their wasteful hosts. Norwich seemed like a side as resigned to inevitable defeat as Stan and the boys were back at home prior to kick off.

Roeder locked the team in after the game and presumably told them some home truths. He described the current run of away defeats as 'unacceptable'?

Stan wouldn't disagree with that little gem. Who knows what the players reaction will be, but needless to say we'll all be treated to the oft trotted out boll*cks, 'We're hurting, we owe it to the fans…'.

Quite frankly, Stan doesn't want to hear it anymore – words are cheap. He just wants to support a team that gives him hope of something more than last day survival and at the present rate of point scoring even that is looking a struggle.

Troublingly you get the impression that if you put Saturday's starting line-up out at Turf Moor ten more times they'd lose nine of them.

However many times you look at that team-sheet containing Fotheringham and Clingan in the middle, Russell up front and an ever-changing back four behind them you only ever see one result on a November afternoon in Burnley; defeat.

With two home matches looming and the natives getting restless something needs to happen. Even four points seems inadequate if we lose the next two away and to be honest, four points out of the next two looks pretty optimistic at present. Oh, happy days…

That's done it. Load the car. Stan's off back to Devon!


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