Norwich vs Middlesbrough 1-2 (Greenwood, Silvera)

What an enjoyable win. Our structure out of possession is much better now as we can now absorb pressure and calmly get through tricky moments in games. We can't benefit from turning matches into wide open matches and outgun teams like we did last season, so we have to play a bit more organised and wait for our moments to exploit. I'm sure Carrick will have learned far more in the opening 7 games of this season than the whole of last season as he has had so many problems to solve, which he has done very successfully lately. Defensively we were fantastic. Fry was solid yet again. He seems to be stringing some consistency together and becoming a key player for us.

Greenwood took his goal incredibly well. There's obviously lots to improve on, but yet again, there's great potential there for such a young player. I can imagine him developing into a Ryan Fraser type of wide player who has great technical ability and end product. I especially like Greenwood's aggression and work rate when trying to regain possession - it fits in well with our pressing style which helps us regain the ball high up the pitch. There was a point in the second half when he was pressing incredibly doggedly and regained the ball in a deep defensive area, which was very good to see. You can tell that he's came through as a striker and is a natural finisher with the way he calmly tucked away his goal. Similarly his goal against Sunderland wasn't the easiest chance either. The way he has filled in for McGree has been fantastic. He's continuing to look a great piece of business by us, and Leeds' decision to allow us to sign him for £1.5 million looks very likely to come back to bite them.

The opening goal looked simple but it still took high quality from the team. Hackney was clever to force an error and showed high quality with his touch and quick pass into the perfect area for Coburn, who did well to bring the ball inside and picked out Greenwood to slot away first time. Greenwood anticipated the counter-attack and had started sprinting even before Hackney had won the ball - which led to him being unmarked to score. It's a little thing that easily goes unnoticed but it's excellent play by him to make up those crucial early yards to get ahead of Norwich's RB. The swift counter-attack shows that the cohesion in our attacks is now very good as we made it look really simple. Contrast that with that shambolic failed 4 on 1 against QPR earlier in the season and you can see the progress we've made. A random observation but the first goal was made between two 21 year old's and one 20 year old, which sums up the growing shift towards more youngsters breaking into the team. 

Regarding the bad news about Smith's injury, it's disappointing but I think we'll be fine. If anything, Berg seemed ahead of Smith before the Sunderland match as he started ahead of him in such a vital match, but got injured in the warm up so could be considered Carrick's first choice for that position. As we have Berg and also Dijksteel I don't think we'll need to dip into the free transfer market or even sign a RB in January unless we get another nasty injury in that area. Clarke returning at CB will provide another option to allow us to move McNair across to RB. Forss being injured yet again is a concern as he seems to be relatively injury prone.

Edited October 27, 20232 yr by p_mards