Norwich City Fan View: Alex Neil is starting to lose the plot

A make-shift Norwich City side suffered late heartbreak at the hands of Premier League Southampton on Wednesday night as a stoppage-time Shane Long strike condemned Alex Neil’s side to a 1-0 defeat and yet another FA Cup 3rd round exit.

Whilst FA Cup progress was evidently not high on the list of priorities for Neil nor the majority of City fans, the defeat only adds to our woeful spell of form – which now reads just 3 wins in our last 17 games, 9 defeats in our last 13 and no wins in our last 10 away from home.

Neil’s tendency to tinker often leaves his line-up’s difficult to predict, but the combination of injuries, suspensions and players being rested meant that guessing the Scot’s approach to the trip to St Mary’s was nigh on impossible.

With Nelson Oliveira serving a 3 match suspension for his dismissal at Rotherham, Neil was not willing to risk his only other valued strike option of Cameron Jerome meaning that Kyle Lafferty was given a rare start.

In order to save Alex Tettey, our only fit senior centre-midfield, from suspension, Robbie Brady and 19-year-old Ben Godfrey made up an unusual centre-midfield pairing, whilst perennial substitutes Josh Murphy and Alex Pritchard were also given opportunities to impress. In defence, Neil reverted to a back five, a formation that was seen during the 0-0 draw at Brentford on New Year’s Eve, with Ivo Pinto and Russell Martin operating as wing-backs either side of centre-backs Ryan Bennett, Sebastien Bassong and Timm Klose.

The game went largely as expected. With the majority of the eleven each having something to prove, I didn’t believe that we would simply roll over and be on the end of a drubbing. Effort and endeavour was present in abundance, but – unsurprisingly, with such a make-shift side – the quality was not there to complement it. Again, after keeping a clean-sheet at Brentford, the 5 at the back option appeared to give us much more stability and with City currently being linked to Sporting Lisbon’s attacking wing-back Marvin Zeegelaar, this is a formation that Alex Neil may well begin to utilise more regularly.

If this is the case, however, then Neil will have to work to ensure that the increased defensive stability that it brings will not come at a cost to our attacking intent. At Brentford, our offensive play was easily nullified by the Bees’ back 4, resulting in a shut-out, and this was similarly the case at Southampton. Lone striker Kyle Lafferty was left largely isolated throughout; something which was reflected by the fact that Norwich failed to muster a single shot on target during the 90 minutes.

There are some positives to take: despite defeat, we more than competed against a strong Premier League outfit with a much-weakened side. Furthermore, Ben Godfrey, in just his third start, impressed in centre-midfield and his emergence, along with that of Louis Thompson’s, suggests that we will be equipped with good, young midfield options going forward.

Unfortunately, yet again, any positives that could be taken from the game were almost instantaneously forgotten by the time that Alex Neil stepped in front of the cameras and spouted mind-blowing drivel post-match. Almost weekly, there is at least one quote that causes Norwich fans to fume and Wednesday night’s stand-out contender was: “My players are better suited to playing against Premier League teams than Championship teams.”

Considering that just 8 months ago we got relegated from one of the weakest Premier League’s in recent memory, I don’t know where to start with this one. Furthermore, to think that he came out with this quote just minutes after losing to a Premier League side makes it all the more baffling. Apparently, even when we are “better suited” we still lose!

I am genuinely beginning to feel that he is losing the plot – if he was an animal he would have been put down weeks ago. For crying out loud, Norwich, someone put the poor man out of his misery.