NORWICH
There's something rather telling about the fact that whilst Sunderland, Newcastle, Villa, and even Swansea all sacked their managers, frustrated with their lack of progress and results and desperate to prevent their teams sinking into the Championship, Norwich kept the faith in Alex Neil, and it cost them.
The only newly promoted club to get relegated this season, Norwich will be able to pinpoint the crucial week where their season ran out of steam.
This was always going to be a relegation fight for Norwich. They were the weakest of the three teams coming up, securing their promotion through the play-offs, which historically is not a good sign, and they had a decidedly average squad, littered with mediocre players and only really one or two top players in the mix. They were below par in all areas of the pitch, joint-third lowest scorers and joint-second most conceded, it's a recipe for disaster. With Villa obviously the worst in both categories, Norwich had the unfortunate privilege of having the second worst combination, as although West Brom, Palace and Watford all also struggled to score goals, they were all bolstered by significantly better defences, and, paralleled, although Bournemouth conceded as many as Norwich, they also scored more goals.
And the season started okay by dogfight standards, with wins against Bournemouth and Sunderland earning Norwich nine points from their first seven games. But defeat against Leicester, much as it did for Villa, proved to be a catalyst. and after losing all four games in October, including an infamous 6-2 defeat against Newcastle that served to highlight exactly how shoddy Norwich's defence had the capacity to be, the Canaries went on to win just one league game in three months, a narrow 1-0 win over Swansea, leaving them with fourteen points off sixteen games, right on the brink of the relegation zone.
Things picked up around the Christmas period, with brilliant wins over Manchester United and Southampton giving Norwich nine points from four games, before things fell off a cliff. Their defence was thoroughly exposed, as Manchester City knocked them out of the FA Cup, and then Stoke, Bournemouth, Spurs and Liverpool put fourteen goals past them in four league games, their fifth in a row shortly following, an ignominious defeat to Villa.
Leicester, Chelsea and Swansea would compound their misery, leaving Norwich without a win in ten games and over two months. Luckily for Norwich, Sunderland and Newcastle were conspiring to be equally utterly useless, and they were only a point or two inside the drop zone. When they finally turned the corner and secured back to back wins against West Brom and Newcastle, they were favourites to stay up, licking their lips at their next two fixtures: a Palace side who hadn't won in 2016, and Sunderland. Win those two games, and Norwich would have stayed up.
They didn't. They handed Palace their first win of 2016, and then rolled over and showed their bellies as Sunderland romped over them, and went on to secure their own survival. A pivotal week, a real opportunity for Norwich to survive, and they failed. Narrow, but nevertheless expected defeats to United and Arsenal meant that Norwich were relegated whatever happened in their last two games, and they were left to rue missed opportunities.
The painful thing about this season for Norwich is that they had it in their own hands. If they'd beaten Sunderland they would have stayed in the Premier League. Away from that, they let a hapless Crystal Palace do the double over them, conceded six against Newcastle, and lost to one of the worst sides in Premier League history. Norwich were never able to build any sort of consistency, and it was a case of one step forward, two steps backwards.
That said, their squad was never good enough to stay up. Their goalkeepers were not great, Bassong is not a Premier League centre back, as he's proven for what I believe is the 6th year in a row, their midfield was easily the strongest part of their squad, as they had some decent players in there, not in the least the talented Nathan Redmond, but up front? Patrick Bamford is a failure, Cameron Jerome is not a striker to keep you in the Premier League and I like Mbokani but he's not enough on his own to stay up. He scored seven goals. Jermain Defoe scored fifteen. Enough said.
Norwich seem like a nice club. They're reasonably well run, they have a nice manager, they have some okay players. They were certainly not a disaster like Villa, and they weren't horrifically underacheiving whilst spending millions like Sunderland or Newcastle. But, in the end, when it came to the crunch, Norwich didn't have the quality to stay in the Premier League. They looked like a Championship club when they came up, and they looked like a Championship club when they went down. I expect them to make a decent run at the Championship next season, but once again, the play-offs may be the best that they can hope for.
The Hard and Fast Section
- Andy Murray survived a huge scare in the French Open.
- Leicestershire were bowled out for 43. Ouch.
- Tuilagi injured. Again. Body blow.
- Bedene and Watson join Murray in Round Two.
- And Mourinho talks continue. Kill me now.
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