Oh I am sure he didn't but we never seemed to really get going save for 10 minutes at the end of each half. And that isn't the first time. Do we even look like putting in a competitive performance for at least 45 minutes atn?
Every other Norwich game I post that we always beat them. I didn't this time. Had a bad feeling. Not as bad as the reality though...
Finally just watched the highlights on MOTD. Definitely a foul on Samir, if that's Varane, Dias, Van Dijk, Rudiger, they're getting the foul simple as.
Any season WFC finish in the top 2 divisions is a success in my opinion. I dont think we can ask for more as fans and if our owner needs to use the club as a platform (in the words of Moog) to trade footballers and transfer money and assets around the globe that's 100% fine by me. What I don't want is to be lied to, manipulated and gaslighted by the hierarchy and have some snake oil selling con man communicating on Gino's behalf to the fans.
Absolutely. This is why the EPL is engineered somewhat. If we did that to any other team, a free kick would awarded. In the first half a good cross comes in for us. Dennis challenges for it, their defender goes down holding his head even though nothing really happened and the ball falls kindly for us to attack in a good position. A free kick is instantly awarded. I’m getting fed up of the constant selective decisions that keep going against us. We’re sh1t, we all know it, so referees don’t need to twist the knife further. We’ll **** up nicely on our own. It doesn’t need referee creative intervention.
I did notice he did give a foul on Kabasele earlier on for the same thing which Norwich weren’t happy about. Maybe played on the ref’s mind ?
This is a big question for the hierarchy to ask themselves. My contention is that at least some of our players suffer from a lack of coaching because of the deliberate lack of personalisation built into the system with the hire/fire process. On a tactical level, if the Board are unable to determine and ensure a coherence of style and the players to enact it (which I was given to understand was the basis of this system) then they must employ a coach who is allowed to do it. But this, as most clubs find out, is also a risky business. The Graham Taylors of this World are a rare breed.
You roll the dice with those types of fouls. To me, he gets the lightest of contact and tumbles to the floor. I’m not sure Samir needed to go to ground, seems like he had things under control but he tried that age old ‘touch of contact’ things. You might get the foul, you might not. I certainly don’t think we should feel hard done by. Nor should it have lost us the game, it’s not like we went hell for leather from that point on and got caught out on the break. We didn’t change at all. Zero fight.
Strange that we had twice as many shots, twice as many on target (Norwich had 2 by the way to score 3 goals), more corners and a slightly higher expected goals.
Mike Dean had a very poor game throughout I thought. Not withstanding his iffy personality, I believe Dennis was unlucky to be sent off - Second yellow very soft, they were both stretching for the ball, he was just a bit further adrift. First yellow very unfair, the other fellow went in two-footed!
Exactly. I hate seeing players play for those. Think it was a slightly unluckily combination though - new player to the English game, probably used to getting those ‘fouls’ every time in Serie A + probably the ref most likely to want to go against the grain and not do what nearly every other PL ref does and give that type of foul.
I’ve always liked Mike Dean. He’s a rare breed in that he always favours the underdog. Unfortunately for us, this was the only game we’ve played this season where we weren’t actually the underdog. This is why the marginal decisions all went for Norwich. Again, bad luck for us in a season where pretty much everything that can go wrong has done. I’m starting to believe in the Nigerian curse they put on us. Should have let Dennis go to AFCON. He’s been pretty useless to us since it started and will be banned for the Burnley game anyway.
Dennis being out of Burnley isn't a huge issue if he's going to play like he did on Friday for the rest of the season. We'll have Kalu in by then and Cucho deserves a start for being one of the few players who looked like he actually cared against Norwich.
STOP PRESS: I mentioned that we had the better stats in my earlier monologue however at the time I did not know exactly what the were, but I do now having watched MOTD last night and they are all in our favour: - Possession: 69-31 Shots: 15-7 On target: 4-2 Corners: 5-1 Expected Goals: 1.07 - 0.97 However as we all know we still managed to lose the game heavily, surely our luck must change very soon MORE STOP PRESS: I wrongly maligned Samir for the 2nd goal, it was in fact Kamara who could have done better as he hardly jumped to try and block Sargent's headed goal.
It's difficult to believe that Dennis was completely happy with not going. Who could have possibly predicted this outcome...
Ok in your opinion it's not a foul. First and foremost it shows to me how weak football has become. Samir is a big guy and can take that contact. It's 0-0 if you're protecting the ball for it to go out of touch then protect it, don't feel for contact and collapse. Sorry but I will not accept that from a supposedly big, strong experienced footballer. It's just put the whole team under even more pressure and we all know what happened from then on.
I actually agree with u on the expected goals stat, but I was just posting all the stats shown on MOTD.
Who said any different? Try reading it again as I actually say "we all know we managed to lose the game heavily". So what is your point
I was thinking along similar lines when I saw the stats, but they must have been revised to something less in our favour as I’m quite sure I saw them on the BBC after they indicated it was FT. Having seen them again, to have 69% possession and home advantage and still have only just over double the total amount of shots and double the shots on target (not to mention having only 1.1 times more expected goals) doesn’t look so good. In fact, Norwich did marginally more with their modest possession shots-wise than we did, even if the 3-0 did flatter them greatly.
They were clinical and our keeper didn’t make a save. Their ‘dodgy keeper’ didn’t have to. Just as a reminder that they’d only scored 10 goals this season before the other night. Truly horrific performance. Some idiots on here can dress it up with possession stats all they want. But that’s the way an idiot does.
And they’d let in 45 goals, even more than us. Even putting aside the fact we conceded 3, the fact we couldn’t score even just one goal is a travesty. The high possession stats just make it even worse, not better.