HOLT'S ABSENCE CRITICAL IN NORWICH'S CUP EXIT

HOLT’S ABSENCE CRITICAL IN FA CUP EXIT

In Victorian times cricket grounds where Gloucestershire were playing regularly changed their admission prices according to whether or not W.G. Grace was playing. ‘Admission 3d. If Dr. Grace is playing 6d’ read the signs.

I wonder if, following the furore regarding prices for Norwich City’s 5^th round FA Cup tie with Leicester City last weekend, the Premier League club should have taken a leaf out of the Gloucestershire book. Instead of their blanket £25 charge for adult admission perhaps it should have been ‘Tickets £15. If Grant Holt plays £25’.

For on the evidence of last Saturday a current Norwich City team without their talismanic centre-forward is certainly a far less potent machine than when he is causing mayhem in the opposition ranks. Which, ironically, is presumably the very reason that he did not play; because City manager, Paul Lambert (in whom, of course, we trust) wants Holt at his fighting best for the imminent visit of Manchester United to Carrow Road.

Lambert made a value judgement. In today’s world of Premier League financial necessity a ‘result’ against the champions is more important than FA Cup progress.  Sadly, though an easily defensible view, this unromantic stance is not entirely in keeping with that held by all of The Canaries’ supporters, many of whom were desperately hoping for a Cup run the like of which they have not seen since flat caps, wooden rattles and cardboard cut-out trophies. With Premier League status looking almost secure for next season was this not the time to go all out for success in a competition which offered a genuine chance for the club to grace the new Wembley Stadium for the very first time?

In the manager’s defence that is not to say that Norwich lost to a sharper, hungrier Leicester side just because Holt was absent. He did not set out to lose and the side Lambert fielded might well have contained the necessary strength to win the game had its members performed at their best. But they did not. Instead they were well below par and one was left wondering why.

As soon as a Holt-less team is announced there is a tangible disappointment in the crowd. Not only will the warm-up be less entertaining without him teasing his pals but who's going to get in the referee’s ear, you wonder, who’s going to grin at the linesman and ‘wind up’ the opposition’s back four? And, crucially, who will lead the huddle? When the teams came out on Saturday I watched with interest those last few exciting moments before kick-off. As stand-in skipper, Wes Hoolahan, was tossing the coin the rest of the side went through their usual routine of mutual high-fives and occasionally applauding the opposition before gathering for the ritual ‘huddle’. There were, however, no arms round the shoulders initially as the lads waited, almost embarrassed it seemed, for Wes to complete the formalities on the centre-spot; they just stood in a loose circle. When Hoolahan did arrive they joined up but just for a very few brief seconds. There was barely time, I imagined, for the surrogate to say ‘I’m a highly-skilled Leprechaun with a brilliant left foot’ before the group broke and the game began.

I just knew then it was all going to go wrong. Before every game I watch those huddles and I try to imagine the power of the words spoken in that most private of team moments. And always I think of Holt and of how his ordinary Cumbrian vowels will inspire his team-mates. I love it when the gathering seems to go on just a little longer than it should, keeping referee and opponents waiting before the yellow circle breaks and battle commences. There’s almost a suggestion that the Holt-led huddle is saying ‘Up yours! We’ll play when we’re ready!’

It could just be my imagination but I genuinely do think this ‘Holt influence’ on others is significant. Home fans are galvanised by him and without his lead were significantly quieter on Saturday. Away fans dislike him and allow their focus to be distracted from supporting their own side. Officials are constantly aware of his presence while his colleagues do seem palpably motivated by his driving example.

In a purely footballing sense what Norwich lacked on Saturday was perhaps Holt’s hold-up play. Whenever the likes of David Fox and Elliot Bennett, ball at feet, looked up to assess their options what presented itself to them was limited. Instead of a centre-forward ‘showing’ for the ball, making runs into space or, crucially, towards them, demanding a pass, they saw just a jumbled blue and yellow picture and opted, more often than not for a hopeful ball vaguely in the direction of Steve Morison’s shaven head. Unfortunately few of his subsequent aerial flicks found a team-mate. Instead of Holt retaining possession in an advanced position we saw the ball given away. On the few occasions passes were directed to Morison’s feet his heavy first touches were disappointing and, as they did throughout the game, eager Leicester players won the ‘second ball’.

Paul Lambert has done more than enough in the last two and a half years to earn the right for his team selections to be unchallenged by me or anyone else. Disappointed though I and many City fans are by our cup exit there is, I hope, no suggestion that the manager was wrong to leave the captain out of the side, though I wonder if, with hindsight, he wishes he had at least had the big man on the bench.

The most poignant question in the wake of the game is, I suggest, just when did Norwich City last have such an influential player?

AWAY FORM - 'THE LAMBERT EFFECT'

AWAY FORM – ‘THE LAMBERT EFFECT’

If there is one quality which marks out the top teams in football it is the ability to pick up points away from home on a regular basis.

On the face of it home advantage is difficult to explain. It’s still eleven against eleven. The pitch is still more or less the same size and, these days at least, usually of similar quality. There was a time when certain teams, like Derby County in the seventies, enjoyed welcoming visitors to their own particular slab of rolled mud and then taking ruthless advantage as their hapless opponents tried to pass their way through the rapidly forming furrows. But in the modern era of undersoil heating and semi-artificial woven surfaces this is no longer the case and grass in the goalmouth is not just an early or late season phenomenon.  And though we all reckon that referees are swayed by the crowd into giving ‘home’ decisions the extent to which their performances are now analysed by television must have reduced the likelihood of this happening.

Long road trips which once inconvenienced away teams do still exist, of course, though they are now undertaken generally in fairly luxurious coaches and indeed most of the teams in the top flight will fly to their most distant games, as Norwich City did for their most recent success at Swansea. Another luxury which the more financially buoyant clubs usually offer their players is overnight accommodation close to the away ground making the whole process of match day preparation highly convenient. Indeed one might wonder whether such away trips, with the team relaxing, eating and preparing together are not actually liable to offer a better team-bonding experience than the run up to a home game, when players meet up just a few hours before kick-off.

Yet, home advantage remains a hugely influential factor. Almost every team has at least one member of its personnel, whether player or manager, who succumbs to the temptation to speak publicly of the need to turn their ground into a ‘fortress’ where they are difficult to beat.

There is still the crowd, of course. Certainly some groups of supporters are capable of producing a cauldron of sound in support of their heroes whilst others can create a palpable hostility towards visitors. However, though no visit to, say, Millwall can ever be called a pleasant experience modern stewarding, policing and general stadium management pretty much guarantees player safety.

All in all, then it is difficult to account for the huge impact that playing at home has on the performances of football teams. Yet it is undeniable. Consider Stoke City in the season 2010-11, at the end of which they were 13^th in the Premier League. In 19 away league matches they won just 3 times and lost 13! And what of Fulham, currently 12^th in the league, who have garnered just 8 of their 30 points this season away from home?

If you are going, as a team, to ‘cut it’ in professional football, then, you have to come to terms with the away game conundrum. Just how do you go about reproducing the level of performance you manage in your own stadium when in less familiar surroundings? Only by doing so will real progress be attained.

Paul Lambert’s impact at Norwich City can be amply illustrated by an examination of his transformation of this area of the club’s achievement. Few City fans need reminding that during the club’s last ill-fated Premier league season (2004-5) Nigel Worthington’s side failed to register a single win on its travels and indeed subsequent Championship campaigns under the Ulsterman and his various successors did little to change the picture; away wins were hard to come by and following The Canaries on their travels was a labour of love fuelled more by optimism than experience.

Following City’s latest victory, at Swansea, their fourth away triumph of the current campaign, Lambert’s record makes remarkable reading. In 57 league games on the road his Norwich teams have won 26 times, drawn on 17 occasions and lost only 14 games. When you factor in that successive promotions mean that each passing year has seen his side competing in a higher division (and thus presumably against tougher opposition) than the last, this catalogue of results takes on an even greater significance.

Watching Norwich the length and breadth of the country has always been a test for the Yellow Army. Let’s face it, when you live in Norfolk any away game is a trek! However, in the last two years it has become something akin to a religious experience to congregate with fellow supporters to worship Lambert, Holt, Hoolahan and the rest. The gathering of the clan, the first renderings of the iconic ‘On The Ball City’ and the hairs on the back of the neck start to stand up. I personally have never enjoyed any game more than the away win at Leicester last March when, for me, it all came together; fans, team and management united in one magnificent, breathtaking cause.

Nobody outside the ‘camp’ will know just what the secret of the turnaround is. The great team spirit which the coaching staff have engendered in the Norwich group has been tangible for some time now, characterised particularly by late goals and stirring fightbacks. For me, though, the most obvious and quantifiable manifestation of ‘the Lambert effect’ has been the side’s away form.

DAVID FOX - NORWICH'S PASS MASTER

DAVID FOX - NORWICH'S PASS MASTER

We all have our favourite players and the reasons for our choices are many and varied. Football is, after all, a game of opinions. Often those players who achieve huge popularity amongst supporters are goalscorers; these are the men whose contributions can actually be measured in finite terms, hence the enormous esteem in which Grant Holt is currently held by Canaries fans. His record of 52 goals at a rate of more than one every other game in his City career so far is justifiable cause for his cult status and other Carrow Road favourites who have gained that mythical label of club ‘legend’ include the likes of Iwan Roberts, Ted MacDougall, Robert Fleck and John Deehan, or, if you want to go back further into the club’s history, Johnny Gavin, Jack Vinall or Terry Allcock.

It is easy, too, to admire heroic goalkeepers. I still remember with a kind of schoolboy awe the athletic brilliance of Kevin Keelan, the first Norwich ‘keeper I ever saw, and the likes of Bryan Gunn and Chris Woods are others who have earned enormous credit in the role.

Gutsy, tough defenders also capture supporters’ hearts. Duncan Forbes, the granite Scot, who anchored the City defence in the seventies and once suffered a collapsed lung in a League Cup quarter-final win at Highbury has always been a heroic figure in my eyes, along with Dave Stringer, the Yarmouth boy who not only played 499 times for the club but later, as manager, took them to fourth place in the top flight in 1988-89. More recently Dave Watson, Steve Bruce and Malky McKay have excited tremendous admiration for their defensive tenacity.

Though there have been many wonderful midfield players in the club’s past it is perhaps less easy to measure their particular contributions. Graham Paddon and Ian Crook are two who spring to my mind, the latter in particular for his superb passing, that priceless quality which can unlock opposition defences and create chances for the more glamorous goal grabbers.

In Paul Lambert’s current Norwich City side which has made what many consider to be an unexpectedly impressive impact on the Premier League, I believe there is one player whose enormous contribution has not been sufficiently recognised. That man is David Fox.

Fox was signed by Lambert from his previous club, Colchester United, in June 2010 just after Norwich had won promotion from League One. It is no surprise that the arch passer had found himself sidelined at Layer Road under the jurisdiction of Aidy ‘Long Ball’ Boothroyd.  I have to admit that at the time I knew little of Fox. I was aware that he had some ‘football pedigree’; I remember his father, Peter, keeping goal for Stoke City and I knew he had been a junior at Manchester United. I also had the dubious pleasure of seeing him curl a free-kick past the hapless Michael Theoklitos (not one of City’s finest goalkeepers) in that dreaded 7-1 defeat to Colchester in August 2009. However, his career had hardly been stellar and it was not a signing which particularly excited me  those eighteen months or so ago.

Nonetheless he was a Lambert signing and that alone should have been enough to make me, and indeed all City fans, rather more expectant than we perhaps were. At the time the manager said that he thought Fox would ‘benefit the team with his wide range of passing’ and I also seem to remember him saying that he could ‘manipulate the football’. As the side surged to a second successive promotion Fox cemented a berth in the starting line-up and his crucial contribution to the cause was never better exemplified than by the utterly sublime pass which set up Simeon Jackson’s tremendous headed winner to clinch promotion at Fratton Park in May 2011.

This season Lambert’s men have earned plaudits for any number of reasons, not the least of which is their magnificent team spirit, their willingness to ‘have a go’ at all times and their priceless capability of scoring goals despite not having the tightest of defences. As far as passing goes, however, it is promotion pals, Swansea City, who have caught the imagination of the nation’s pundits. However, it would be wrong to overlook the fact that Fox has played a huge part in the Canaries’ success and a slightly closer examination of the evidence bears this out.

To date Norwich have notched up 32 points, courtesy of a very tidy record of 8 wins, 8 draws and 8 losses. Fox has started in 16 of the team’s 24 fixtures, made 3 substitute appearances and in 5 games played no part. Of the 16 games he has started Lambert’s men have won 6, drawn 7 and lost just 3 (against Manchester United (A), Arsenal (H) and Tottenham (H)). They have also lost 3 (Chelsea (A), WBA (H) and Sunderland (A)) of the games in which he has not featured at all. To sum up, then, in the 16 games he has started the side have amassed 25 points, whilst in the 8 he has not begun they have taken just 7 points.

It would, of course, be foolish to suggest that it is simply a case of ‘leave out Fox at your peril’ and I have elsewhere recorded not only my huge admiration for the manager but also my complete trust in his decision making and selection. Lambert knows that it is a ‘squad game’ and that players occasionally need rest. He also has proved a master of picking teams and formations to suit the demands of a particular opposition.

That said, Norwich do seem to be a more effective attacking unit with David Fox pulling the strings. Back in September Lambert said of the Stoke born 28 year-old ‘He has always had an eye for a pass and is a terrific footballer. He sees things so quickly and has a great awareness of what’s going on around him..a marvellous talent’.  

Without underestimating the level of performance of other members of the side, and in particular the occasionally magical Wes Hoolahan, with David Fox on his game, as he showed in yesterday’s outstanding home win over Bolton, The Canaries pose a serious threat going forward whoever the opposition. Paul Lambert’s challenge as the season progresses will be to continue to pick midfield combinations which can combat the strengths of opponents, protect the back four and create goalscoring opportunities; his comments about Fox would suggest that he will be keen to include him as frequently as he feels able.