Think he's not without fault, we had some ropey performances early in the season which in fairness he appears to have learned from, but even in recent weeks Huddersfield, although it was an away point, was a desperately disappointing game against depleted, mediocre opposition. Still not enough to throw the baby out with the bathwater tbf, I'm generally very happy with the manager
I'd email them to moan. Unless people tell them this stuff is ridiculous it'll never stop. I'm pretty sure too they relaxed the hot food rule after there was quite a bit of pushback when it was introduced last season. Can't find where I read that though. Sounds like you found a right jobsworth. Would been better off walking away and finding another turnstile block to take your chances with.
The coach needs to take Jamal Lewis out and teach him that his right foot is not just for standing on. Any professional footballer that can't use both feet is ridiculous.
For those of you who were not part of the Shout Box, here are three words RC enlightened us all with while we were 0-2 down. Toe. Spiders. Swelling, I will leave what any of that means to your own imaginations.
Haha! Canaries hoping the Norwich board came under the Watford influence last night Personally I’m happy with Ismael. He’s done more right than wrong.
Great win, a shame we had to do it the hard way and come back from 2-0 down. Only Leicester have scored more goals at home than us this season. Kone and Livermore were fantastic, Livermore showing his experience in the last few games. Rajovic did what he does best and finished his chance, could end up with 15 goals this season at this rate. Aspirlla with a beautiful bit of skill for the goal, had that been Messi or Mbappe it'd of gone viral by now. Clearly much better having Asprilla or Martins starting to give us a more creative outlet. Felt sorry for that young lad who looked about 15 that came on for Norwich, got absolutely bullied by our midfield. New Keeper needed in January! When does the relegation battle start?
This is what really annoys me about Lewis. Receives the ball in plenty of space - we have a good amount of bodies in the penalty area if he wants to play a first time cross (probably the best option). If he doesn't want to play that first time cross then he's got space to either take it down the line a bit further to try and cross or play for a corner - or if he's feeling clever he can play a pass into the channel for Sema. Instead he takes it backwards - with Sema in front of him there's now no wide safe option to pass to - he can go back to Livermore or one of the CBs but that completely negates the attacking advantage he had originally. Instead he tries to twist and turn his way out of trouble, he's gone from being in acres of space to having 3 players round him - not necessarily a bad thing (as that's 3 less players elsewhere on the pitch!) but does make it much harder for himself. The ball to Sema ultimately gets through (despite being overhit), but everyone in the penalty area is expecting him to lose the ball - so even if Sema does manage to get on the end of it we're not gonna be in a good position to profit from it. Just gamble on putting that ball in, I'd really like to see Sema back at LB as he'd ultimately do that, with Martins obviously providing another good attacking outlet. Will make us much more direct which I think plays to our strengths more.
At 2-0 down I would have gladly taken a point!, the extra 2 were a bonus which for the first 30 mins we could only dream of. It looked to me in the first half that they had been told everything had to go down the left, time and time again they ignored Asprilla standing by himself in space on the R.H.S. to try and thread the ball through to Sema, you could say it worked as the 2nd goal was made by a Lewis cross, but why not vary it a bit more.
They were all doing it. Same bag I bring to pretty much every game is now apparently banned. A small cheapo fabric backpack. I asked two stewards if this was a brand new rule, one answered yes, the other no. They then both comically reversed their answers before returning to looking at the Champions League scores on their phones.
Probably because nearly every time we did try to go down the right we'd give it away through a misplaced pass from one of Asprilla, Andrews or Porteous. It was picked up by the Sky commentators in the end it was happening that often.
Last night Watford put me through a season's worth of emotions in one night. On 20 minutes I was sitting in the Family Stand and said if Norwich get another, I'm leaving. Ismael has got to go and Gino out. After 35 minutes I was standing up applauding and cheering like a little kid. Football is bonkers, and none more so than this match. We were sh1t until we scored that beautiful Kone goal and all of a sudden, we were watching a different side. After 20 minutes I was sitting smugly knowing all the attacks I had earlier from posters were going to be royally rammed down their throats after this debacle, but Watford players had other ideas. Credit where it's due, from where we were at 0-2, seeing Kayembe play a pass under no pressure straight out for a throw-in denying us a promising attack, I could only see a comfortable defeat. I still do not know how we managed to turn that around. But, to be fair, their keeper was just as bad as ours, and Hamer is dreadful, so that did play a large part. He spilled one earlier when Kone nearly scored, and he probably should have saved Kone's shot which gave us the first goal. He fumbled Hoet's shot too, which resulted in the winner, so a dodgy keeper does help the cause. But we did play well once we scored the first goal. We were on top after that and there was only one team likely to win. The second half seemed to be one of will Norwich hold on, or will we get the goal. The Aprilla goal was a pure joy. The skill in that moment was top drawer, how he danced around the keeper and kept his cool was very impressive. From the other end, I thought Hooper had disallowed it, so we stopped cheering. I didn't actually know the goal was a valid one until all the players started walking back up the pitch. We could have avoided the last few nervy minutes, after Bayo was gifted an incredible opportunity, but he elected to leave the ball because he thought he was offside. He wasn't of course, but a word to the wise if Bayo is reading this. Play the ball you numbskull and let the linesman tell you if you're offside or not. Hamer finally made the first save of his professional career in injury time, which ensured we held on to the win. A pulsating match, but one we should have probably won comfortably. Those two conceded goals were Sunday league stuff and there's a real problem with how we defend set-pieces. That is a coaching issue and even though VI is aware and apparently we've worked on it, we still look garbage. Norwich got their head on every single cross in the first 30 minutes or so. We are the worst in the league at defending set-pieces and we should not be worst at ANYTHING for any stat in this league. It's VI's Achilles and may well cost him his job in the fullness of time. We can't continue gifting teams these soft goals. We did show a lot of desire and fight once we got back into the game, and from that point we controlled it. So we do have a bounce-back ability in us, especially at home. Attendance was meek. Didn't think it was anywhere near 16k. This is a reflection of fans speaking with their feet, cold night and being on Sky. But I would say the fans did stick by the team. Apart from some boos when Kayembe made that shocking pass at 0-2, the fans did try to rally the team, even though we were quiet until the goals.
Really enjoyed the ref allowing their keeper to take 20 seconds with the ball in his hands and about a minute for every restart and then warning us straightaway when we started doing likewise when we went ahead! Really good game in the end, plenty of attacking endeavour and intent which I didn't think I'd be saying after the opening half hour. Think Ismael is doing a pretty decent job with resources he's got available, has settled on a midfield three that works (for the most part) that none of us would've chosen, shown flexibility in adapting the style so keeper sweeper abandoned and full backs not popping up in central midfield so much, moved away from two inverted wingers to try and get the best out of Rajovic.
Really good assessment of the game and feeling. It was genuinely like they had never trained together before during up until the goal then the cohesion that followed was unrivalled. Such a Jeckyl and Hyde team but although we can rightly say we need a strong intervention with set piece defending and individual errors there is a lot more heart and desire from this team to fight for the cause. VI deserves credit for this as much as he deserves criticism for the above. That chest from Bayo near the to control the ball and eventually win a foul (or throw?) and gesture to the crowd to rally was great from him.
The attendance looked pitiful, I think all clubs use season ticket holders as a "sale" even if their ticket never entered the ground which heavily distorts most attendances. Surely can't be hard to get an accurate count of tickets buzzed through the gates in this day and age!
Apart from when they were booing and singing about the team being facking useless... Our home support is awful, has been for ages and shows no sign of changing.
Everything about the matchday experience is terrible. Everything. It’s still stuck in the late 90s. Your Song was meandering along well after kick off again. Same zero personality announcers saying the same old nonsense every single game. I’m surprised we get an attendance at all.
That's as much because Asprilla and Andrews are still too often erratic and ineffective (they're both still developing though of course) . They have their moments, but we'll need to add some extra quality competition on that flank if we wish to progress.
I’d like to think that was just in response to the away fans singing it about us. Incidentally I thought the away end were appalling - apart from the odd Ipswich ditty they only sang the cliched “shall we sing a song for you / is this is a library” type stuff (yeah mate we’re 2-0 down), then not a peep out of them from the moment we equalised.
Did anyone else think it was a strangely subdued reaction when we scored the winner, I guess with the Ref waving his arms all over the place no one knew exactly what was happening!
He blew up immediately and didn't really point to the centre spot, could have been signalling a fk to them with his vague gesture. Also we're conditioned to assume the worst.
I think Asprilla started to run to celebrate then sort of stopped and looked back at the ref was a telling visual to the illusion it may of been chalked off? Not sure what the arm waving was about, perhaps telling the Norwich players' to stop complaining?
watched it on sky last night, Asprilla’s went over the line was cleared from behind the line and the Rajovic bundled it in off his arm, every Norwich player then started claiming handball which it would have been. But the ref then confirmed it had already crossed the line from Asprilla
Was definitely the confusion as to whether it had been given or not rather than anything else. I started celebrating then half stopped and was looking at the ref, was only when he did the point to the watch to show goal line technology had showed it crossed the line that could celebrate properly.
I saw Porteous' debut at Reading and he looked the complete central defender, the best we've had for years. What happened? It's not as if Reading that day were worse than Norwich yesterday.
Was wondering whether that might have been chalked off with VAR or given as an own goal. Wasn't 100% clear that Asprilla's initial shot crossed the line, then the clearance cannoned off another Norwich defender and was very close to the line when Porteous palmed it in. Not impossible that the ref's watch only buzzed when Porteous handballed it, he'd have no way of telling as it all happened so fast.
The replay showed it was well over tbh even without the funny lines . Think the Norwich player was actually in the back of the net trying to clear the ball .
