For those tonight anxiously seeking a straw to cling to, mutter a silent thanks for the Premier League fixture computer.
If you wanted to pick anyone to play at home next weekend after events at Craven Cottage this afternoon it would be QPR.
To lose your opening away game of the new season 5-0 is bad enough; to lose your opening home game of the season 5-0 to a Swansea City is a rare saving grace to Norwich’s 5-0 defeat by Fulham.
Enter week three of the campaign with three points on the board from two games and the world will look an altogether different place from that it does tonight.
The 6.30 train out of Liverpool Street this evening will be the setting for many a disappointed post-mortem as Chris Hughton’s opening game in charge of the Canaries ended in an alarming heap.
For the record, the trouble began a little after the 20-minute mark when Damien Duff poked Fulham ahead after a raking through-ball from John Arne Riise caught City with pants down.
At which point, enter Fulham’s new Croatian striker Mladen Petric. Signed on a free from Hamburg SV, he marked his Whites debut with a forceful header off a Duff corner to double Fulham’s advantage before the break, before compounding Michael Turner’s debut woes by playing a 25-yard in-off the new Canary centre-half to end the contest at 3-0 nine minutes after the restart.
There was one killer fact – rare is a team that gets anything out of a game when they concede one goal four minutes before the break and another within ten minutes of the restart. Key goals at key moments in a match.
Number four went to Alex Kacaniklic off a Petric backheel; five was a Stevie Sidwell penalty three minutes from the end after Hugo Rodellaga tumbled over on a Turner challenge.
New England keeper John Ruddy spared City a few more blushes in terms of a repeat of that other, infamous Craven Cottage scoreline, whilst Bradley Johnson’s second-half drive offered the travelling faithful a rare moment of good cheer.
Otherwise it was one to swiftly forget – that and one for the lurking Match of the Day pundits to pick apart later.
“When you don’t put in a good enough performance particularly against a team as good as these there’s every chance you’re going to come unstuck,” the City chief told the club’s official website afterwards.
“But you certainly don’t expect to concede five goals – especially on the first game of the season.”
He has a Spanish international full-back to slam into that back four – as well as big decisions to make as to how to feed skipper Grant Holt with the kind of service he needs to thrive on.
Throwing Robert Snodgrass and Anthony Pilkington out wide and deploying Andrew Surman through the middle off Holt didn’t particularly do the trick.
Had Wes Hoolahan enjoyed an injury-free week, he might have been that much nearer a start; whilst at home, Hughton may well run a horse more befitting for a home course and revert to a straight-forward 4-4-2 in which a James Vaughan or a Steve Morison features up top.
And the fervent hope has to be that the other ‘No10’ in the building – Jacob Butterfield – is, indeed, all that he is cracked up to be. And, likewise, that QPR arrive in Norfolk still in shell-shock from their own opening day disaster.
“You have to remember that it’s the first game of the season, we’ve all been there before,” said Hughton, whose managerial and coaching nous will be needed a-plenty this week.
“Whether it’s at the start of the season the middle or at the end defeats are defeats and you have to be able to bounce back from them and learn from them.”
And learn quickly, one might add. Before the fears and the doubts really start to gather pace.
I feel i’m in a no win situation whatever i say. If I said i had my worries before the season had started it would make me look like a hindsight motivated troll.
If I said i think everything was going to be ok, then that would put me in the head buried in the sand brigade.I am not in either group,however, how can the same set of players (along with a number of additions) perform so admirably last season, be so enept this?
My view, for what its worth, is
(1) that the present management team appear knowledgeable, experienced, but nice.
(2)you have the manager and head coach who are from strictly defensive backgrounds hence the formation of 4-5-1
(3)You have a team of players who have been set up over the last 3 seasons to defend by attacking.
These are just my own thoughts and if i had the answers, no doubt i would be in the job.
I just hope though the management staff are humble enough to change, tweak, and learn that these defensive tactics dont work with the players here and that sometimes as was shown over the last 3 years fortune favours the bold.
I can think of loads of teams I’d rather play next week – look at qpr last season after they got hammered at home first game. Oh, and Garrido isn’t an international player. Only 4 u21 caps. Come on Rick, you’re normally better than this.
I will pick out just one thing that bothered me most from today, and there were many to disapoint me. When the 3rd goal went in we took off an attacking midfielder and replaced him with a defender, for the life of me I can’t understand what was so important to defend at that stage of the game. I like Mr Houghton but I found it a very negative thing to do, I suspect if Mr Lambert was in that situation, he’d be taking off a defender or holding player and throwing on another striker. “If you can’t win the game make sure you don’t lose it”, I’ll miss those little gems of insparation and I suspect the player will to.
I was at Fulham and I am afraid the performance bore out my anxieties before the season. We lack pace up front and play square far too much.
If Hughton plays one up top, Morison is quicker and more mobile than Holt as he showed in the earlier part of last season.
if Turner cannot up his game the defence needs an organising figure which role Russell Martin fulfilled on a number of occasions last season. Tierney clearly lost the plot on a number of occasions at Fulham.
It is one thing to play defensively but if the opposition can score like Fulham City look incapable of getting it back.
Next match is vital and I hope Benno is on from the start and Wes can be fitted in. At least he tried to make things happen even in a pretty demoralised team.
One plus from yesterday was Ryan Bennett. he is quick and decisive and with the right support he will prove a top class buy.
My memory might be fading but didn’t Paul Lambert often play with just one lone striker – particularly in the early part of last season – and have success with it? eg Bolton and Liverpool away. It needn’t be a defensive tactic if players can get up and support the lone man which Norwich seemed incapable of doing on Saturday. What I felt was more alarming than anything else was the lack of fight, the lack of competitiveness, something you could never accuse Lambert’s teams of. And Turner’s response to the shot that led to the third goal was shocking. But, hey, let’s give the new regime a chance … it’s one game and we never do well at Fulham. And pray that the chief culprits – Johnson, Pilkington, Tierney, Holt and Turner – all chose to get their one bad performance of the season out of the way early on.