The ACN Match Review – Arsenal (h)

Biggest positive

At half time I remembered that I’d put some chocolate coins in my coat pocket before I left the house, which made half time the most enjoyable part of the match.

Biggest negative

I’ve written about a lot of negatives for ACN this season: from our disjointed and dispirited nature under Farke to our lack of end product in recent matches. There’s been a fair bit of ground covered.

Today I’m going to focus on summer recruitment and attitude.

Before I begin, I’ll make it clear that I’m aware recruitment at Norwich is a team effort. The head coach, sporting director, chief scout, and scouting team all contribute, so the blame cannot fall on any one individual. However, at the end of our last Premier League season, Stuart Webber made it clear that the buck stopped with him, so I’ll focus this section on our sporting director.

The most striking quote from Webber in the summer was that, after sending Farke to war without a gun in 2019, he’d provided him with “a gun, a few grenades, and a bazooka” in 2021.

Do those terms apply to any of our summer signings? Despite the injuries/covid outbreak, we still saw 7 of our newest recruits on the pitch today (8 if you count Gibson, for you pedants out there). The collective outlay on those seven players alone is unheard of under the Webber regime.

Yet they’re not good enough.

I’m also becoming increasingly convinced that several Norwich players are not playing for the shirt. We’re used to players using the club as a stopgap, a couple of seasons to make the headlines of the back pages and get a move to a ‘bigger’ club. Even with that taken into account, we’ve always had likeable personalities who were playing here for the love of football and genuinely fell in love with the club – we let a number of them go in the summer, for free. So many big characters who had the ability to rally their teammates were moved on and not replaced. Their absence is keenly felt.

We didn’t replace Emi or Skipp. We’ve lost leaders in the dressing room. Where the hell does the team go from here?

Funniest moment

Ramsdale scuffed a goal kick and fell over quite spectacularly. It does feel a bit insane to call out the opposition keeper in a match we lost 5-0, but other than the green flare going off after the fourth was scored, I can’t think of anything else.

What was the atmosphere like?

Flat. Miserable. Hostile. Arsenal fans delighted in mocking us, trotting out the classics: “your support is fucking shit,” “you’re going down,” “you’re fucking shit.” We didn’t care. We know what we are; we’re almost resigned to it. The ground was half empty at the full-time whistle, and it’s impossible to begrudge those who left early.

Lungi watch

Imagine my surprise that he was dropped after being Norwich’s best player against Villa – I know that’s not saying much, but he was the only bright spark in a dismal performance, and I really, finally believed he’d done enough to keep his place.

Of course, when it comes to Lungi’s selection, I’ve learned to expect disappointment. He didn’t even make it off the bench. While I’m hoping this was to keep him fit in the event that Kabak can’t play two matches in 48 hours, I’m not incredibly optimistic.

Summary

Blimey. The Man United match feels long ago, and we show no signs of turning it around. Norwich are playing like a team cut adrift at the bottom of the table – which they’re not – and failed to capitalise on an opportunity to improve their position with fellow relegation rivals not playing. I think this actually feels worse than the turgid performances at the start of the season. There’s no real hope for improvement, no idea about what we can change or how we can change it, no matches we can point at as a viable opportunity to pick up points.

I’m almost at the point of viewing the 2019/20 campaign through the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia…