Cooper the master of understatement as he addresses performance

Steve Cooper watched his side lose 1-0 to Birmingham City last night and described the performance as “well below par” but that really doesn’t cover yet another performance where we looked anything other than a promotion chasing side.

As football fans we all accept that we will not win every game.   Even fans of Norwich and Watford will tell you that they have seen games this season where they don’t look like promotion chasing sides.  But what they see is a side that generally looks like they can score and a side that has cohesion and direction, things that are not being addressed by our manager and squad.

Take out two last minute penalties in the last two months and we would be 13 points behind Watford and looking more nervously over our shoulder than we currently are and the comments of the boss were probably predictable before the words started coming out of his mouth as he reflected on the last minute penalty that meant it was three defeats in a row for his side.

“For sure, it was a poor performance. We fell well short of the levels that we aim to hit, and have hit on many times this year,” said Cooper on the club’s official website.

“We can’t back away from the fact we were nowhere near good enough today, particularly with the ball.

We defended okay and showed enough commitment to that, but we’re a much better team on the ball than what we showed tonight.

“In the end, that probably was the biggest reason why the performance was what it was, and the result.

“In the build up to this game, we trained so well and everything was positive. What we’d seen in the last week or two was not what I saw tonight.

“That was disappointing and we won’t hide away from the fact we were well below par.”