Norwich City’s mediocre season continued with a 0-2 defeat at the hands of the Championship’s in-form team, Fulham.
I can’t say I was surprised at the final outcome and Fulham looked pretty good. They came to play, just like Reading did, last time out but the visitors this time were a whole lot better than the Royals were two weeks ago.
City were forced to stick with a back four, with Grant Hanley’s shin splints keeping him only on the bench. Hopefully we’ll see the back three at QPR on Monday.
The City line up was missing Onel Hernandez through hamstring trouble, which is a blow. He’s going to miss QPR as well, just as he was starting to look like he was going to become a big player for us.
That left Josh Murphy as the only real pacey outlet and he had a rather inconsistent game. In the first half he was guilty of some poor decision making on a several occasions. The worst being when he played the ball on the edge of the Fulham area to an off side Dennis Srbeny.
He’d delayed the pass, dithered over what to do and sent it too late when James Maddison was in acres on his right. Srbeny threw his arms up in frustration and Maddison berated his mate for at least a couple of minutes afterwards during a break in play.
The second half and he was better though. He fired a volley just wide, sent another shot across goal and played Maddison in for a chance that was quickly closed down. The decision making was much better and the difference in the two halves sums him up. He has all the attributes to be a very good player but needs to keep working on his decision making in crucial moments of the game.
That is easier said than done though and it needs a lot of practice. If you’ve ever played football, then you’ll know that some players know what to do and when, better than others in those high pressure situations. In my local league ‘career’ as a centre back, on those occasions I did get into the forward areas, everything seemed to happen very, very quickly. Often too quickly for me to make the right decision.
I listened to Rio Ferdinand on BT Sport recently and he said something similar about his own experiences in those forward positions. As a player, I clearly couldn’t hold a candle to Rio but I knew exactly what he meant when he described these experiences.
Fulham had the Lion’s share of the ball and that’s unusual for a Norwich game at Carrow Road. Despite their neat passing game and pretty movement, time and again, moves broke down on the edge of the City area though. Fulham’s only shot on target in the first half, a tame effort from Tom Cairney.
At half time I was on the concourse in the upper tier of the River End and working my way through the crowd, picking up snippets of conversation as I did so.
The one that stuck with me was from a group of old boys, one of whom said ‘They’ve got no ambition to go forwards and Murphy is fu@*ing useless.’
We could all relate to what he was talking about.
There was plenty of sideways and backwards passing but Fulham did the same as they also played the possession game.
I thought that Fulham played the way that I think Daniel Farke wants his side to play. He wants to keep the ball at all costs, not waste it with hopeful balls forward (which is what the bloke who sits in front of me would prefer) but to create chances with quick, incisive attacks.
Fulham were sharp in the second half when they got their two big chances inside four minutes. Angus Gunn made a super save from Mitrovic’s point blank header but could do nothing about Johansen’s fierce, close range follow up.
A fortunate deflection off Zimmermann’s heel then fell to Cairney and just like James Maddison, players of that quality don’t miss in that sort of position.
That was the difference, making the most of those chances and being clinical when it mattered.
It’s all ‘ifs and buts’ but had Hanley, Leitner, Trybull and Hernandez all been fit enough to play then things might’ve been a bit different.
Who knows?!
Losing 0-2 to a Fulham side in this run of form is no disgrace but it’s frustrating that we weren’t able to make more of the periods of the game that we were a match for them. That though, has been the story of our season.
OTBC
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