While Rick was writing his MyFootballWriter match report and comment piece last night I briefly swapped hats and wrote my thrice-weekly fans-eye piece for the Metro. As City’s ‘social reporter’ I’m asked to dispense with neutrality and make the blogs sharp and punchy while always draped in yellow and green.
It turned into a bit of a rant in truth; Mr Waghorn giving me a lesson in taking a step back and assessing the afternoon’s events with a cool head.
So… with the benefit of 16 hours ‘thinking time’ I’ll now try and be a little more objective.
We can mull over the rights and wrongs of City’s tactics all day and all night long… and judging by Twitter have done just that. But when your team fails to fulfil the most basic footballing objective of shifting the ball successfully from A to B you’re in trouble.
City didn’t and they were.
The merits of playing 4-4-2 have taken up column inches and minutes of Canary Call airtime aplenty and so it was a tad ironic that on an away-day when Chris Hughton opted for a 4-4-2 we should get so horribly outplayed.
The lack of numbers in a midfield area where City were already technically inferior made for a painful afternoon and while I may have been (not for the first time) in the minority, for me it was screaming out for a five-man midfield from the word go.
Yes, Johan Elmander dropped deep and, playing just behind Ricky van Wolfswinkel, did his best to help the midfield stem the incessant flow, but it was never going to be as effective as having a Jonny Howson bolted on to the existing four.
With Leroy Fer reminding us that he’s still finding his Premier League feet and Bradley Johnson re-affirming once again that passing isn’t his strong suit, the central midfield area looked exposed from minute one. All a far cry from 12 months ago when Johnson and Howson outplayed Sandro and Livermore in a straight two versus two match up.
With City’s wide men also failing to impose themselves there were gaps galore for Spurs’ cultured midfield to thread passes through, which they clearly did – with far too much ease – for the full 94 minutes.
And it was hard to watch.
Again, I come back to City’s inability to retain possession; something which has been a recurring theme since our arrival back in the Premier League. All too often we go into hot-potato mode and ping the ball around in such a careless fashion opposition teams just have to ‘press’ in the knowledge that eventually we’ll give the ball back to them.
The flip side is, on the odd occasion when we do find ourselves with a decent share of possession, the ball is shifted so slowly and ponderously we make little headway and find ourselves with no choice but to go sideways and backwards – much to the angst of the River End faithful.
There has to be some middle ground where the ball is zipped around, but with precision. When we do that – and it does happen on occasions – we look a much better side for it. The trick of course is to do it consistently regardless of the quality of opposition and whether they ‘get in your faces’ or give you time and space to play.
A little overly simplistic of course – and far easier said than done – but without the ability to do it Premier League wins are going to be desperately hard to come by. It’s fundamental, in fact THE most fundamental aspect of football, even more so than the ability to score.
Without moving the ball around the pitch successfully how can we hope to get the best out of RvW? How can we expect to see Gary Hooper confirm to us that he is indeed a goal-poacher extraordinaire?
Of course it’s easy to pore over every negative aspect of yesterday’s performance and pontificate on where Hughton and the players went wrong – we’re football supporters after all, that’s our raison d’etre – but it goes without saying that none of them set out to play poorly.
Equally Hughton – despite the views of some – doesn’t deliberately seek to bore us to death by setting his team up conservatively; he and his players want desperately to do well for Norwich City FC for obvious reasons.
Also, with a social media savvy chief executive like David McNally as his ‘line manager’ you can bet your life Hughton knows all about it when the comments being aired are less than complimentary.
Having read this week’s Q&A with the CEO on the club’s official website I’m more convinced than ever that – in his desire for continual improvement in every aspect of the club’s operation – he’ll demand answers from his first-team manager when days like yesterday occur.
I’d imagine post-match interviews with the world’s press are a doddle compared to a Monday morning audience with McNally.
My final thought pertains to John Ruddy and his post-match chat with BBC Radio Norfolk’s Chris Goreham. In conversation with the Big Man, Chris questioned why City appear so tentative and cautious on their travels. Ruddy confessed to not knowing the answer to that riddle.
On an afternoon of many negatives, for me that was the biggest. The thought of us not all pulling in the same direction is unpalatable in the extreme, although perhaps I’m reading too much into Ruddy’s reticence.
Either way, the Villa game can’t come soon enough…
Great article and, in my humble opinion, spot on.
I spent the 20 mins before kick off wondering how a 4-4-1-1 could possibly cope with spurs talented ever moving footballers. The phrase “2 banks of 4” kept coming into my head, evident that we had gone there looking to concede nil.
I then spent the first half wondering how long Fer and Johnson could run around chasing shadows, completely outnumbered and outgunned.
Wondering is CH watching the same game, and sitting stunned when nothing is done to change a failing system. Spurs are good, very good, but this is no excuse for ineptness.
I’ve spent the last few hours wondering if RVW is regretting coming to my fine club, without a passing, forward thinking midfield partner, i’ve a feeling those regrets may begin to surface.
Overall an average start but already i have the feeling that every home point dropped is a point closer to the trapdoor.
It was a sobering afternoon Gary. Although I have been a critic of Hughton’s cautiousness, that is more a question of attitude than formation. We failed to keep possession and would have probably benefitted from Hoolahan playing in his usual role behind one of the strikers. This might also have been the afternoon when Hughton did something unpredictable such as resting Redmond (particularly given his comments after the Southampton game about protecting him).
My feeling was that the players went on to the pitch accepting that they were going to lose and that it was just a case of by how many. There was no conviction about anything we did and like many games last season, we appeared clueless when we found ourselves in our opponent’s half.
At this rate we are going to pick up very few points away from Carrow Rd, and will soon be slap bang in the middle of a relegation battle, that unlike last season, will be continuous.
If I was David McNally in my Monday morning audience I would be suggesting – or perhaps a touch more than that – that Hughton brings in an offensive coach who can get the midfield to bring the ball forward and feed RvW and whoever else is up there. Also to increase our possession %. I see someone on the twitter feed has suggested Paul McVeigh. There must be options out there, but if Hughton cannot identify and address the problem himself, including in real time, as he seems unable to, then he needs to admit that he needs help. And Johnson, Garrido and Whittaker need a rest next game.
Ruddy told Michael Bailey that we needed to be more aggressive in attacking. Check him out on his sunday afternoon report. I’m giving Hughton three games, including the Watford match, and if the results and performance aren’t up to scratch, I think he’ll go. At one point, fairly late on in the game, one of the Spurs fans shouted, you’ve only had one effort on target. The response was clinical, ‘we haven’t had any yet you plonker’. At least we’ve got our sense of humour, though it is wearing slightly thin
Another away day blank down at White Hart Lane,
An Icelander undoing us with assists from a Dane,
On the pitch, the lads were perspiring,
At home, it was dull and uninspiring,
A bit more ammo for the CH bashers to complain.
A lot of fans still seem to be living in ‘Lambert land’. Hughton is who he is – a former defender with an inherently defensive outlook. That’s fine to a point but we have to carry some threat when on our travels. Could be worse – we could have lost at home to Alain DePardew’s lot!
If Howson had started as the number 10 then Hughton would have been slaughtered for being too negative.
It’s always going to be difficult away at the really big teams…of course BUT
Our problems under Hughton aren’t just in those games. They are certainly evident in ALL away games and even in some home games. His mindset is simply that of a defender. All his interviews are the same , ‘You must be aware of the quality they have’, ‘We know they possess a huge threat’, ‘We were aware of how much they could hurt us’ etc etc etc
It’s really sickening. Maybe it’s professional, realistic, based on hard-nosed experience but it isn’t what I want to see and hear from a manager.
By all means scout the opposition and try to nullify their strengths but this simply cannot be at the expense of any attacking threat of our own. Hughton, Trollope and Calderwood clearly cannot coach attacking football and there needs to be a change of some sort if we are not to find that the money spent on forward players has simply been wasted. God knows what RVW really thinks of his new team!
Surely one of the major ways to prevent opponents from causing you problems defensively is to force them to change their shape by attacking. If you just sit back in a rigid, inflexible defensive shape you invite them on to you and that’s the Hughton problem. Also if we have the ball they don’t, which is obvious, I know, but even in home gaames we regularly have far less possession than our opponents. This, I think, is for two reasons; one because we have technically poor passers (BJ) but more importantly because players are not able to move and make themselves available because the coaching staff insist on such a rigid shape. Thus the player on the ball has very few options.
Times and tactics have changed but I still think the fundamental mindset of a manager/coach is the overriding factor in determining a team’s style.
Even years ago we had Saunders’ pragmatism against Bond’s style. We’ve had an awful lot since, including Walker’s innovations, Roeder and Grant’s inability and who knows what else? But guess what? It’s never been as dull as this!
Re: Frank(ly) – I agree with some of what you complain about but I do think a lot of people are hitting the panic button a bit prematurely.
“..it isn’t what I want to see and hear from a manager.” – what does that mean? Would you rather Di Canio’s stupid histrionics and on screen player criticism?
Take a look at the table after just the 4 games – S’ton are often held up as a model for playing great football and having a lot of possession – they’ve scored 1 goal in open play to date.
West Brom were hailed for their style but where are they at present?
For all Villa’s plaudits, they lost at home to the French Geordies.
Swansea (the ‘kings’ of possession football) are finding life a much tougher struggle this season.
My point – it’s incredibly early in the season. There are a lot of sides yet to get near to their best form (including us), so let’s not call for a change at the top (if still struggling) until we are into the depths of winter.