Canaries Blogs

Pre-Season Musings And a Few Thoughts on NOT Spending Money

|

Norwich lost for the first time in this summer’s pre-season as they were beaten 1-3 at Colney by Brentford, late afternoon on Wednesday.

I can’t stress enough how much you needn’t panic about losing a game of football with multiple changes made, in pre-season.

Brentford are a week further ahead in their planning for the Championship season which starts a week earlier than the Premier League does. That means that their line-up was a bit more settled and although they made a total of 7 changes in total, they were made in a more measured manner than City’s.

Even so, I know that social media was interspersed with people having mini-meltdowns beside wiser people trying to just keep it all calm.

It doesn’t mean anything and as I write every summer, pre-season is all about getting miles into legs and trying out formation and personnel ideas from the Head Coach.

Here’s how Daniel Farke lined up his men:

Norwich City: Fahrmann (Krul 45), Byram (Aarons 76), Klose (Hanley 66), Godfrey, Heise (Lewis 76), McLean (Roberts 76), Leitner (Trybull 76), Buendia (Cantwell 76), Srbeny, Hernandez (Idah 76), Drmic (Stiepermann 45). Subs (all used).

As you can see there were plenty of changes made and it’s telling that after Farke made six changes in the 76th minute, Brentford scored their third just two minutes later.

There was no Teemu Pukki, who was rested with a “slight toe injury” and there was no Neal Maupay for the Bees, with their star striker having been linked with a move away since the season ended.

Emi Buendía, Kenny McLean and Josip Drmic all came back in, having been rested against Schalke due to minor niggles and Buendía got City’s goal with a 20 yard cracker on 9 minutes, only for Brentford to equalise just two minutes later.

All in all, the second-half saw 8 changes, so like I say, don’t panic.

Should Norwich Have Spent More?

One of the big topics around, whichever forum you take a look at, this summer has been whether or not the Canaries should be spending more money than they have, so far.

Stuart Webber told us very early on in the summer that we shouldn’t be expecting the club to spend much money. In fact, he said, the Canaries will probably have the lowest budget in the Premier League this season.

That means that the club will have to be as canny and shop as smart as they did last summer and in the two previous transfer windows.

This question has been brought up a few times in the Vital Norwich Forum and here’s my response to it all:

Do we have enough to stay up? That’s the multi-million pound question. I think that even without signing anyone, our best XI would give anyone in the Premier League a game. A lot, if not all of last season’s first-team squad are now worth a heck of a lot more than at this time last year. So much so that a team in our position would have no chance of being able to afford any of our “best XI”, not a single one of them, now.


Pukki must be worth £20m.
Buendía approaching the same.
Aarons? Another figure like that, Vrancic maybe £10m, Leitner the same, Hernandez £10m etc etc etc


Our scouting and recruitment of these players and good coaching is what has got us here and having seen it last season, I think we need to absolutely trust in it again.
Matt Targett went for £14m and Byram cost us £750k – is Targett worth £14m? Time will tell, I suppose but for the first time since that double promotion under Lambert, I’m not fearful of what’s coming.
We’ll probably take a few beatings because if Man City can beat Chelsea 6-0 then it can happen to anyone but Man City and Liverpool are not who we are directly competing against. I’m confident in the squad we’ve assembled but we need Pukki to stay fit…”

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment or get involved in the forum and have your say. One thing I can promise you about the Vital Norwich forum is that it’s friendly. It’s not a bear pit like Twitter or a breeding ground for numpties like Facebook or certain other, perhaps more infamous forums…

OTBC

Share this article

Editor - a forty something Canary, who has been following Norwich for 30 odd years. Family man with wife, kids, dog and a love of sport. Fan of Boxing, Vale 46, F1 and Rock.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *