I'd seriously love to see him pick the ball up and move into space with it. Basham and Bogle - his right-side team-mates - manage it with no real fuss. Show Christ Basham 10 metres of space in front of him and he'll take it off you, and will keep moving even when he lays it off. Show Jayden Bogle a window to advance either parallel with the touchline or inside behind his tracker and he will have it. Norwood receives and his immediate though it 'long pass', whether the receiver is in an advantageous position or not. If the wingbacks are out wide it doesn't necessarily mean they should have the ball. The tactical advantage maybe isn't there, and the defence is set in such a way that they are predicting that pass and spread to intercept it, so exploit the gaps made by that.
Neither Hourihane nor Norwood are 'playmakers' in the true footballing sense, which is why despite people's dicks rapidly filling with blood that Norwood has had an error-free match and has had many touches, overall it isn't man of the match stuff. He did put in a few decent crosses and some pretty good forward passes. But the rest of his game, short passing, taking the game forward, snuffing out the opposition and being creative across the midfielder's remit, is still wanting.
Norwood is not Michael Brown. Even on Brown's poorer days, he was tough in the tackle, positionally adroit, carried the ball from one half to the other and rarely passed it backward. And in four seasons he had 147 games and 28 goals. Norwood has had 138 games in red and white and a measly four goals. That is the difference between 8/10 or 9/10 and MotM and simply 'business as usual'/'what we expect'.
Don't get me wrong, Norwood is 'better', but this 'better' spell is against two structurally weaker sides, two games v ten men and a poor loss before that. PHs move to 5-3-2 and non-Wilderball is frustrating Norwood because it's really the only game he can play, hence hollywood passes into nothing. But he also had N'Daiye to do the shovel-work, which I feel is also affective on his performance.
pommpey