Glen Roeder is hoping that two successive home games can produce wins that will fill the team with confidence when they next travel away from home. With Preston set to play this Saturday (8th Nov) and Swansea the following week before travelling away to Nottingham Forest for an evening kick off he hopes to cure the bad habit of dropping points away from home. With only 5 points from a possible 24 away from home this season it is something that needs attention. Especially with the away game due to be televised for all the nation to see, it could well become an embarrassing evening for the Norwich boss. 

Reoder said “We need to sort the men out from the boys in the next seven days because we now need to go and win two home games until we get an opportunity to pick up a point or three away from home next time we travel,” this is critical given our position in the league caused by the last two defeats.

“I was hugely disappointed. We have got to do something about our form away from home because this is the fifth time we’ve lost away from home. It’s a very bad habit that we need to break quickly.”

“We rode our luck a little bit in the first half but we went in 0-0 at half-time. No one was disappointed with that. I felt we could still play better. We allowed them to have too much of the ball, but going down the tunnel for the second half I thought we would step on and perform better than we did in the first half and it didn’t happen.”

It all fizzled into a lacklustre second half performance where players went missing, the players need to develop a backbone and show some grit.

“We can talk about it, but at the end of the day they have to show that themselves,” he said.
“We can bring that to their attention and show them instances where I felt we didn’t show enough for the ball. The person on the ball didn’t have enough options today and I didn’t like that.

“I have always maintained bravery is not kicking someone from behind, any silly fool can go through someone from behind and kick him up in the air. Bravery for me in football is when you are not having the best of games and you still keep making angles to receive the ball, you keep running, you try and help your team-mate out of a difficult spot that he might be in and I thought we had too many players that didn’t do that and from that point of view they have let down each other and I didn’t like that because they are a good group of lads, a decent bunch of lads but they have to find a much meaner streak away from home.

“Anyone can be brave in front of 25,000 people at Carrow Road, but, that at the moment, is proving to be false courage. We need to be showing much more courage when we come away on our travels and starts dominating teams away from home.

“Feeling sorry for yourself is the last thing that we need. We need to be a lot bolder and stronger and get on with the situation we have found ourselves in, which we don’t want to be in - but the men have got to come out and play for us.”

Norwich have only managed to keep a clean sheet twice this season one was in a goalless draw at Barnsley and the other was the 1-0 win over Sheffield united a week earlier. That’s two clean sheets out of 15 league games which has to change if the team are to become more consistent.

Roeder also added “Of course, you prefer to be in front, but if it’s 0-0 after 60 minutes games do stretch and there is more room to play in and there is long enough to score a goal,” he said. “But you have got to keep a clean sheet and we have only kept a couple of clean sheets all season.”

Now all that has to be done now is identify why this is happening and which position is more likely to be held responsible, my thoughts are to the right back position but then I don’t pick the team.