Norwich City Fan View: Shambolic first half display at Oakwell

After a week of relative respite following last weekend’s victory over Brentford, the pressure on Norwich City boss Alex Neil has returned once more following a dismal 2-1 defeat to Barnsley at Oakwell on Saturday afternoon. One victory was never going to be enough to sway City supporters back in favour of Neil and with Saturday’s defeat marking Norwich’s 6th loss in 7, and 4th straight away defeat, the Scot is walking on an ever-thinning tightrope.

In fairness, in terms of the team selection, he did what I asked of him. I wanted him to reward the team that dismantled Brentford by naming an unchanged eleven and bar one enforced change, with Josh Murphy coming in for the injured Steven Naismith, this is what he did. Still on a clearly deluded buzz from the Brentford victory I was confident that we would brush Barnsley aside, making it two wins out of two and in doing begin to build some much-needed momentum.

Unfortunately, what transpired was one of the worst 45 minutes of football I have ever witnessed a Norwich City side play - and I’ve seen City managed by Glenn Roeder, Peter Grant and Neil Adams! It was absolutely woeful. Now don’t get me wrong, Barnsley looked like a handy side and I am by no means trying to belittle them, but they shouldn’t have been capable of doing what they did. A newly-promoted side, on a shoe-string budget and with very few Championship nevermind Premier League pedigree players, were schooling us. It was humiliating. Each time they strove forward, they looked like they were going to score and we simply couldn’t cope.

The Murphy twins - starting their first league game together - were being bullied, Robbie Brady was demonstrating once again why he is not a left-back and the centre-midfield pairing of Howson and Dorrans were proving that they simply do not have the athleticism nor defensive ability to play that role together. It took just 12 minutes for Sebastien Bassong to deliver his weekly goal-costing error, when he got his feet in a tangle allowing Tom Bradshaw to fire home, whilst Ryan Bennett struggled to complete a 5-yard pass yet alone the 40-yard diagonals that he was consistently attempting.

The conclusion of the half produced perhaps the most vocal opposition to Alex Neil’s tenure yet: as the Scot and his players walked past the traveling City support and down the tunnel they were greeted with huge boos and numerous choruses of “Neil, sort it out!”. I am not usually an advocate of such abuse against your own team - it is never a nice thing to see, but after the shambolic first-half display that we had all just witnessed, it was fully deserved. I am not ashamed to admit that I joined in!

To his credit, he did sort it out to an extent. Unfortunately, it was simply a case of too little too late.

Yousouff Mulumbu came on for Alex Pritchard (to my initial dismay) and Martin Olsson (a left-back playing at left-back, heaven forbid!) came on for Josh Murphy. Immediately we looked a far better side. It is blatantly obvious that we can only ever get away with playing Dorrans and Howson as a midfield pairing against mediocre teams, who won’t cause much offensive threat, at Carrow Road. With a genuine defensive midfielder in Mulumbu we suddenly didn’t look so vulnerable, and this allowed us to actually begin to play some football. The opening to the second-half was all Norwich and we were rewarded when Nelson Oliveira’s long-range strike slipped through Davies’ grasp to halve the deficit. At this point, and for the following 15 minutes that followed, it felt like it was only a matter of time before we equalised but numerous chances were spurned and following a couple of tactical changes from Barnsley, the momentum soon dissipated. We were still largely the better side and Bassong, Mulumbu and Oliveira all had half-chances in the dying moments to earn City a point. After the incompetence of the first half, however, this would have been hugely undeserved and had we indeed managed to scrape a draw it would have done very little other than paper over the huge, gaping cracks.

For pretty much everyone apart from the people who matter most - the City board - Alex Neil is a dead man walking. Next week sees Norwich face two tough home games against Villa and Huddersfield in front of the SKY cameras and if we perform anywhere near to the level that we did on Saturday then we will be getting nothing out of either of them. A humiliation in front of the cameras was what finally did for Nigel Worthington when we stuck with him for back in 2006, will Alex Neil soon suffer the same fate? Time will tell.