Norwich City vs Leeds(away) Saturday16th December

[Canaryboy]

We wouldn't get a £15m offer for Pritchard considering his injury history. 

But I think we'd accept a £15m offer for Maddison if it came, at the end of the day it doesn't matter how good we may believe he can be in 12 or 18 months.... we could turn down £15m in January and he could do his cruciates in February. 

I know this sounds a bit strange to some, but if we took £15m for any player in January I would expect the club to use some of the money to pay off Jarvis + McGovern and sweeten a Naismith departure. It would be a great opportunity to rid ourselves of deadwood before the revenue drop. Could bribe Russell Martin to retire and become an U23 coach too perhaps? 

I'm more worried about the players we're going to be stuck with than the players we may lose to bigger / richer teams, frankly. 

 

[morty]

We wouldn't get a £15m offer for Pritchard considering his injury history. 

But I think we'd accept a £15m offer for Maddison if it came, at the end of the day it doesn't matter how good we may believe he can be in 12 or 18 months.... we could turn down £15m in January and he could do his cruciates in February. 

I know this sounds a bit strange to some, but if we took £15m for any player in January I would expect the club to use some of the money to pay off Jarvis + McGovern and sweeten a Naismith departure. It would be a great opportunity to rid ourselves of deadwood before the revenue drop. Could bribe Russell Martin to retire and become an U23 coach too perhaps? 

I'm more worried about the players we're going to be stuck with than the players we may lose to bigger / richer teams, frankly. 

I'm trying to remain objective here re Maddison. He won't go to another Championship club, and it would be a real slap in the face if we did this. Don't get me wrong, the lad is good, but how many Premiership teams would he walk right into? Lower end ones that could end up relegated? 

My gut feeling is that we will fend off interest and he will more likely go in the summer. I just don't think he is the type of player clubs will want to buy in January. We know he is worth money, and will only appreciate.

Unless, of course, someone comes in with an offer we can't refuse....

 

[GJP]

Exactly. He's not getting in any Prem 11 and he wouldn't on the bench at most. If he had that turn of pace it'd be different.

But then you can never rule out a club with money making a desperation signing.

 

[hogesar]

Nah, they wouldn't sell all the family silver in one go.

I'll drive Oliviera anywhere he wants to go though, sick of him.

Hopefully not, but even if they just sold Maddison - we're 16th with him in the team performing relatively consistently. Wouldn't like to see our position without him..

 

[morty]

Hopefully not, but even if they just sold Maddison - we're 16th with him in the team performing relatively consistently. Wouldn't like to see our position without him..

For me the jury may still be out a bit as to whether Maddison and Pritchard work together, and I see Pritchard as the more important of the pair, just look at the shots he had on goal on Saturday, I feel he is key to our goalscoring drought.

So whilst I don't want to see either go, if I was forced into a choice, I'd cash in on Maddison.

 

[GJP]

As would I.

 

[Din]

Look at the league table. Look at the points and the teams between us and the play-offs.

We were in a better position when AN came in, he got the benefit of new manager bounce and had a much stronger squad.

What have we got now to make that kind of surge up the table? Not enough.

As I said, it all depends on the next 4 games for me. If we pick up a good amount of points there then we're definitely in with a shout. Don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna suddenly make us favourites to get a play-off place just because we've got some decent results against some bottom half sides, but if we do get a good turnover of points there (say 8 or more from those 4 games) then we'll likely only be 5/6 points off play-offs at most, probably less. With over 20 games to go I don't think you could deny that we'd be able to make that up if we could hit some form.

Within a few games of Neil's tenure we were in the top 6, and within 10 games we had the opportunity to get into the automatic places if we'd won a home to Wigan. It just goes to show that if you can put a run of results together in this league then you have a great chance of getting a play-off spot. You say we haven't got enough to make a surge up the table, but we literally went on a run of form that took us from 22nd to 6th earlier in the season, yes it was at an earlier point in the season where there were a lot less points separating everyone, but it showed that we can put a run together.

Again, don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting us to get top 6, nor am I really expecting us to go that close. But if we can pick up say 8 points or more in the next 4 games and we therefore go within 5 or 6 points of play-offs then suddenly all the fans are optimistic again, the whole club has a more positive feel to it, and we'll have a bit of momentum. I don't think many people will be saying that top 6 is gone then.