I don't think we can deny that we've been overachieving...

Of the players playing major roles at some stage this season, only Pukki, Rhodes (mostly sub), Krul and Buendia are new to the club.

Cantwell, Aarons, McLean and Godfrey have come in but it was known all last season that they would be available this year if they developed well enough. Thompson will no doubt play a role before the end of the season. But they were all playing low level or not at all last year so had a lot to prove.

Now Norwich fan or neutral, if you look at at team which:



finished 14th last season in the manager’s first campaign;

sold the best player in the league by a mile;

sold or froze out three players who between them scored 27 of Norwich’s 49 league goals (next highest scorer was Klose with 4);

embarked on the new campaign with the same staff, same defence & central and defensive midfield, who conceded 60 goals last year, a striker with a low career goals-per-game ratio, much of it at levels inferior to the Championship, and signed a goalkeeper who had hardly played in years;

Had their parachute payments ended and failed to get (presumably) high earners such as Naismith, Jarvis, Oliveira and Wildschut off the wage bill

Looking at that, you’d have to say it would have been a long shot to tip Norwich to be in the playoff spots, let alone automatic promotion spots, half way through the season.

So I guess that in the traditional sense of the term, it is hard to argue that we are not “overachieving” in terms of pre-season expectations.

However, no team can achieve more than they are capable of so essentially "overachieving" is just another way of saying that we were under-estimated. Certainly I didn’t expect us to be anywhere near as good this season.

If by "overachieving" he means that we've been lucky more often than unlucky and that we've earned more points than our performances have warranted, then he can f**k right off :D. I'd say that looking at the development as a footballing team in the space of one year, with so many young players, I would say we might even be achieving less now than we will as Farke has more time with them.

Posted By: Steve in Holland on January 19th 2019 at 12:25:50

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