Deciphering the Premier League
This piece was published in OTBC, the Norwich City matchday programme, for the Premier League game against Aston Villa on 5 October 2019. Subscribe to OTBC here.
We all saw it coming: one week we’re sharp and savvy enough to dismantle the reigning champions, the best side the league has ever seen – the next we’re made to look foolish by a Burnley team full of grit and nous. Welcome to the Premier League, where nothing makes any sense.
Or does it? As tempting as it was at the time to see the Man City result as wholly positive – who was there to be scared of now? – there was something gloomily inevitable about being rendered mortal again so promptly. Every fan knows there are patterns to this game; pride before a fall is one of the most well worn.
After the defeat at Turf Moor, Daniel Farke spoke – as all losing managers are required to – of “learning lessons”: “I’m never happy with a loss, but sometimes you can learn a bit more than [from] a great game like against Man City… We have unbelievably young lads who sometimes need to learn some lessons.”
But I’d suggest that there was plenty to learn from the Man City match – or rather from the fact of their loss. Sure, it was our canny approach that blunted them so thoroughly, and yes, it was a well-deserved win, but we all know that the side that put eight past Watford the following weekend was not the same side we faced. At Carrow Road, Guardiola’s men were off the pace and off-colour — and, as strange as it sounds, we can take heart from that.
In football, fortunes fluctuate, from one match or minute to the next – but by spending millions, Manchester City seem to have insulated themselves against the slings and arrows of the top flight by assembling a gilt-edged team, led by one of the world’s best managers.
Having recruited on a shoestring, we are far more vulnerable, and more prone to off-days, as we’ve already seen this season. But here’s the thing: if even Pep’s golden boys are capable of slip-ups, doesn’t that remind us of the essential democracy of football, which means that we always have a chance, even when the weight of all logic and sense is against us?
And as patchy or inconsistent as our form seems to be, there’s reason to be found there, too. Man City have shown the rest of the footballing world that the hunt for big rewards requires taking big risks. We may not have made the same financial gamble, but with an inexperienced team, an insistence on sticking to our style and, recently, injuries to crucial players, we roll the dice every time we walk onto the pitch. Sometimes it all clicks, as against Newcastle, and Man City; sometimes it doesn’t, as we’ve seen away from home this season. There is no great surprise or trick in this.
We should know by now that you don’t get the thrill of that Man City win without the frustration of being out-battled by Burnley, or conceding a second against Palace while pushing for an equaliser in injury time. You can’t revel in the applause our approach receives one week and beg Farke to switch it up the next. The football we want to play is temperamental, a kind of alchemy: sometimes we produce gold, and sometimes we’re left with tin. As the boss rightly says, there is always room for learning and improvement, but there are also values that will not change, and that only come under scrutiny when we lose.
Think back to what transpired several Tuesdays ago in Crawley. I was there in the stands of the People’s Pension Stadium, watching as the sun set behind the ground, taking our chance of League Cup glory with it. On that night, our fringe players failed to impress; a fortnight later, a handful of those same players faced down the titans of Manchester City.
It’s easy to think that some strange, transformative magic happened on that Saturday night, under the lights of Carrow Road – I freely admit I said as much about our exploits last season. But in fact to describe matches like that as miraculous, or as bizarre one-offs, is to do a disservice not just to the players involved but also to the sport itself.
Football has results like this written into it – if anything, it is Manchester City’s relentless, freak perfectionism that defies the natural order of the game. Norwich’s hard-fought victory was widely acclaimed not just because it was such an extreme David and Goliath match-up, but because it reminded us all of a central tenet of football: it’s 11 v 11. Anything can happen.
Maybe, in our search for sense this season, we’re asking the wrong questions of this game. Next time, instead of “How did that happen?”, try: why not?
