Norwich continue their run of festive fixtures at home to Aston Villa on December 28th, knowing that victory will significantly aid their chances of survival.
With fellow strugglers West Brom and Newcastle facing off at The Hawthorns – and Swansea undertaking a testing trip to Selhurst Park to play Crystal Palace – three points against the team from the second city will be a welcome boost to the Canaries as the bottom of the table becomes ever more congested.
Norwich weren’t terrible against Tottenham on Boxing Day, although their predilection for allowing opposing attackers space in front of goal didn’t help their chances of taking anything from the encounter. However, Spurs are a very good side; a genuine title contender in this joyously unpredictable season, and if Norwich fans are being honest with themselves, none of us expected to leave White Hart Lane with anything.
That being the case, it only adds to the importance of the Villa game; along with the game against Southampton on January 2nd.
Villa are a wretched team this season. Despite securing a draw against West Ham last time out, they remain rooted to the foot of the table. They lack leadership, creativity and anything even vaguely resembling zeal; and display an application to defending that is at times quite astounding in its paucity.
The generally likeable, yet so far unexciting, Remi Garde seems to perfectly complement the Villa side he has taken over; although it would be a particularly harsh critic who laid any of the blame for their current predicament at the feet of the Frenchman.
Since their opening day victory over Bournemouth, Villa have only collected two points from eight away matches; drawing two and losing the other six. Their squad is a mixture of unproven imports and ageing Premier League bit-part players, although in Rudy Gestede and Jordan Ayew – scorer of five goals in his last nine games – they do possess two players who have the potential to cause the Norwich defence problems.
If all this sounds as if I am being overly presumptive about a Norwich win, then, believe me, that is not the case. After all, we’re all aware of our “along come Norwich” tag.
Villa have won their last three league meetings against us, although those victories featured players of the calibre of Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph in claret and blue shirts.
No, what my focus on Villa’s failings is aiming to highlight is that this is an ideal game to rediscover some of our own attacking zeal.
Rightly or wrongly, much of the panache that accompanied our play prior to the mauling at St James’ Park has been replaced with a marked degree of pragmatism. This is fine and, for the most part, I can both understand and concur with the manner in which we have approached the majority of our recent games.
However, just as we could not realistically maintain our gung-ho attacking approach, so too should we not feel constrained by a need for solidity.
As I’ve said, Villa are wretched. Their players only look bothered half the time, and their fans are, understandably, unhappy.
Norwich have players who, on their day and when everything clicks, can play some brilliant football and put lesser teams to the sword. This needs to be one of those times.
Despite what some would have you believe, we’re not in terrible shape. We need to strengthen in the transfer window, yes, but following our impressive victory over Man Utd, a comprehensive win against Villa would be put us in a positive position going into the second half of the season.
Here’s hoping that we can take this chance.
