I thought it was a cast iron red card and penalty that the ref missed in the first half against Dunkley.
But i don't think it was a penalty in the second, i thought if he gave it against Connolly it's incredibly soft and if it's against Kipre he should be struck off as an official - that is diabolical, completely inexcusable. I guess you can argue that it evens itself out but it doesnt does it - Nowich might have got their luck evened out today but we've still had way more terrible decisions against us than for us. I wasn't sure on VAR but after the start of this seasona and seeing how shocking the standard of refs are - i think the sooner the better now as i'm fed up of crap refs.
I think today Norwich were crap and there for the taking they were so sloppy at the back and kept giving us the ball in good areas but i feel when we got the ball in those areas we weren't brave enough to make the most of it. We played too many hopeful balls almost like we had players afraid to run at their man or carry the ball if they had space in front of them for fear of leaving gaps behind them. It wasn't to the same scale as Brentford (although Brentford were light years ahead of Norwich) but we showed them too much respect and we just didn't seem to believe in ourselves enough. Especially at the start of the game Norwich looked all at sea but we seemed almost relucant to make the most of the gifts their dodgy passing from the back gave us and by the time they started to wake up later in the game our best chance to punish them had gone. Our full backs didn't get forward enough absolutely kills any threat, our crossing was poor and there was virtually no penetration. Vaughan might not have been on but we deployed the tactic of lumped the ball at Garner more often than not rather than trying to play give and goes with him.
Like others have said i think if we believed we could've won that and instead of trying to get a point pushed for the 3 i think we'd have got them. It was a really poor decision by Cook to settle for the draw and start and make defensive subs as our high press was working well as they were poor possesion at the back and were struggling to play it out. Attack was our best form of defence, especially as our offside trap was sprung multiple times quite badly. Nowrich were pretty decent in final third on the rare occasion they got the ball that high up the pitch and as soon as we stopped getting men that far forward it played into their hands.
I never like the idea of trying to almost stop playing and just keep the opposition out, espeically so early but we did that at Bristol and it worked and today we did it and it didn't - so it's one of those that it's success determines if it was a good decision or not. But i think we've got to be more ambitious when it's 0-0 and Norwich are average at best.
Another thing i've noticed particulary today but in the last few games is how slack we are at picking up players from throwings and short corners. We are generally quite good at pressing but we do seem to switch off and let players comfortably recieve the ball from a throw or corner without being under much / any pressure. We got caught a few times with short corners today - we need to keep our concentration and be more altert in those situations and it could've easy cost us.
I love Cook but he got it wrong today for me. The way we play our game is our strength, and when we've been away from home i fear we are worrying too much about our opposition to show the bravery we need to play to our strengths and get the full backs to join in attacks and the overloads.
Walton wasn't that busy but did well when called upon.
James the lad is a talent, excellent in 1-on-1's but he needs to work on his crossing, he puts in a lot of crosses but a lot of them are not so good. Also felt he should've just cleared his line under the circumstances rather than risk losing the ball as he did for their goal.
Robinson works hard and his pace get's him out of trouble for his defensive mistakes, but his realy strength is getting up the line and we just didn't see enough of that today. He's a key part of our attack and he wasn't involved in it enough today.
Not his best game, did overall ok Dunkley if you overlook that horrific mistake in the first half.
Kipre was solid again but sometimes he seems to panic and lump the ball forward and give away posession when he doesn't need to.
Morsy and Evans were a bit deeper and quieter than you'd like.
Powell unfortunately quite annoymous today, we are obvioulsy going to not play as well if he isn't on song but the rest of the team can't rely on Nick every week. Others needs to step up and take responsibility if Nick has an off day and i don't think they did.
Windass offered absolutely nothing again on the right, should've been off for McMannaman just after half time we were crying out for his pace and pentration. Windass i think tries hard but i think he's not getting involved in the play enough, he's not putting enough crosses in, he's not able to carry the ball and beat a man. He says himself he's not suited to play on the right - i think he's right.
Jacobs was poor today overall.
Garner was feeding off scraps today, he's much better and battling, winning the headers and holding the ball than Grigg or Vaughan when we go long but he's still no Andy Carroll monster target man and it's still not an effective tactic for us. Think he should've gone off for Grigg with about 30 mins to go.
Connolly got to say the more i see of the lad in midfield the more i'm confused that he apaprently did really well there for Ipswich, he looks every bit a clumbsy defender out of position rather than the lad who apaprently blossomed into a central midfield role last year. Thought his introduction was a bad choice.
Don't think Gibson was the right choice at the right time in this instance, felt we needed more attacking imput to push Norwich back rather a defensive midifield switch. Wonder if Evans had a knock?
Grigg came on far too late to do anything, that wasn't the right call leaving him on the bench so long.
Overall I think today showed us that any ideas we had of crashin the play offs are realistically a little further away than we may have hoped after the Bristol game maybe got our minds to dream a little. I think even if you take out the penalties we just didn't do ourselves justice today, Norwich were very beatable and we weren't able to exploit them. It shows that we've still got quite a lot of work to do, but i think the good news is we aren't that far away - i think it's a question of having more belief and bravery when we go away to teams. Hopefully that can come in time, but as disapointing as this loss and performance was and another dodgy ref, we can't get too down after the start to the season we've had. Hopefully this with inspire us going into the next 2 games like the Brentford loss did going into Hull and Bristol.