Norwich forward set for start against Swansea
Speaking to The Eastern Daily Press, Norwich manager Alex Neil has all but confirmed that Cameron Jerome will lead the line for the Canaries against Swansea today.
Despite having been in poor form all season and clearly not being up to standard for Norwich, Alex Neil has placed blind faith in Jerome throughout the campaign. The club have been punished time and time again this season for Neil’s naivety in playing Jerome and that looks set to continue. Even though Jerome is clearly not going to suddenly find the ability to score goals, Neil trusts him to keep Norwich in the Premier League with just ten games to go…
You have to look at what he offers and if you do take him out of the side what you are losing.
Look at the last few good performances from us and he has been involved in all of them. The one thing Cameron does give us is his work rate is excellent and he keeps the ball well at the top end of the pitch.
He gets himself into really good goalscoring opportunities and I would be much more concerned if that was not the case.
He is creating chances for himself. He is getting into good areas, but they are the chances that can win you games. He is six yards out (against Chelsea) and if he makes clean contact it probably goes into the net rather than hit the bar. Those are the crucial bits that win you games.
That is what happens at the wrong end of the table, your decision-making is not as sharp as it could be.
Jerome has scored three goals in 27 matches this season. In those 27 matches, Jerome has managed just seven shots on target. This means that he has played at least 20 Premier League matches this season without having a single shot on target.
The forward has missed sitter after sitter and yet better striker in the form of Patrick Bamford and Dieumerci Mbokani are sitting on the bench. Neil has given this as his explanation for not playing Bamford today:
He has not played a lot of football so we have to try and get him up to speed.
Patrick is ready, he trains every day but he has not had a lot of game-time and for the magnitude of this (Swansea) game it would be a huge leap of faith to fling him in. Cam has missed a couple of chances of late but what he has brought to the team you need to be careful not to alter that too much and risk the performances dipping.