Paul Lambert Has Hailed The Villa Park Ghost

Paul Lambert has focused on praising the 'unbelievable spirit' during today's pub performance against Norwich.

I doubt I'm alone in thinking he must be talking about a ghostie, because clearly few of the fans saw much spirit during those 94 minutes.

Speaking to the Official Site the gaffer said:

'I have mixed emotions, I thought it was a brilliant finish from Christian to put us one up and then there was the sending off, but the lads showed unbelievable spirit to not get beat.'

Lads? I think that was Brad Guzan to be fair, and Norwich's inability to finish convincingly.

'I just think going down to ten men - especially at this level - you know you're going to be on the back foot.'

Which is why it's curious that Joe Bennett wasn't removed at halftime, or certainly when he started to look like a player about to receive a red with his tackles and blocks. Maybe hindsight is just a wonderful thing?

Lambert also says the sending off was disappointing and could've been called the other way.

Lambert also talked about the positives in the game.

'We didn't have a recognised centre half alongside Ron, but Chrissy Herd came in and he was excellent. There were a lot of positives. The goal was disappointing to lose, the defending was good and it had to be, they put their bodies on the line.'

Well they had to really given everything else about the performance, lack of movement, pedestrian passing unless we really meant to foll Norwich by giving it them back so easily?

Bad day all round, we might not have clicked properly or found any consistency in the performance, but we are certainly better than the pub showing we put in today and each player apart from Brad Guzan in reality, should be taking a long hard look at themselves tonight and Lambert needs to work out what he wants from the first team. We are either too creative in midfield and powderpuff, or we lack creativity and everybody sits back.

We should've gone for it today, but we didn't look like we knew what we wanted to achieve at anypoint.

We go a man down, so we go 1 upfront, and then take off a target man for Darren Bent, and then with 14 minutes to go, we decide to go back to 2 upfront - which was pointless as Norwich were taking root in our half?

Let's just hope it's just one of those days in every sense, and that over the next few matches, things click and we start seeing Newcastle performances on a more regular basis.

It's still early days, but days like this don't do anyone any favours.

Norwich Forum Thread for the masochists amongst us.

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