Marvelous Home Form

Sierralta is clearly the best defender at the club, yet he couldn't get a look-in under Ivic while the others were playing pretty well. Would he have had his chance in the team if we didn't have that injury crisis at the back for the Norwich game? Quite possibly not...

 

I don't think so unless Xisco thought he was the man from what he'd seen in training. It is possible he might have tried him anyway.

He did keep picking FS, whereas oddly the opposite applied to Wilmot after the Norwich game.

 

He also never started Ngakia at right-back, preferring fellow Spaniards Kiko (fair enough) and Navarro (inexplicably), I wonder if there was some kind of unconscious bias towards Spanish speakers? Not that I'm complaining regarding Sierralta!

 

Navarro is the very definition of inexplicable in my book.

 

The UGT as a cauldron of mild disapproval. Superb.

 

I think you will find that Ngakia has been injured recently, and if I'm correct, I think that is almost certainly the reason he has not been deputising for Kiko recently.

 

Sure, but he played Ngakia at left-back against Norwich when Kiko is more comfortable there, played Navarro ahead of him for the cup tie at Old Trafford, and then again for the QPR game when Ngakia was shunted out to the left. Besides, while there was a settled side, he did make changes from time to time, yet Ngakia never got a look-in at right-back. Sure, Kiko is deservedly first choice, but there's no need to forget Ngakia exists

 

Looking at the home only table, the Vic was one hell of a fortress https://www.11v11.com/league-tables/league-championship/2021/home/

 

In my opinion our strong home form was one of the factors in our promotion. Anyone who denies this is a charlatan.

 

Away form wasn't horrendous in the end, 8th in the table, more wins than losses, OK, only 19 scored, but a mere 18 conceded which unsurprisingly was the best in the division

 

Norwich's away record of 15 wins and 49 points is mightily impressive, I looked at the previous second tier tables to see if any team had at least equaled one or both of those records, but no, that's the most away wins and points for a team at this level since it became three points for a win.

That record was a major reason why we couldn't catch Norwich for the title, their home form was much worse (though still second), and funnily enough our record against the top six sides in the end was quite a bit better (14 points from 10 games to their 11 from 10).

 

We seriously would have walked the league had we got it together at the start of the season instead of wasting half of it.

 

That would have been a pretty awesome top two with Norwich on 97 points and us above them on however many. Only Sheff Utd and Reading in 2005/06 who between them averaged 99 points would compare with that.

 

You're the only one i know who thinks that.

 

Tim Burgess disagrees.

 

One to another, I agree with him.