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.