Some thoughts (too many words)

1. We've been down since we lost at home to Sheffield United on December 8. Most people must have realised that. Any remaining hope was snuffed out at Villa on Boxing Day.

2. Given that, the board's mindset is clearly: bank the cash, sell a couple of players in the summer, reinvest and go again. What is that but the 'Charlton model' which Delia cited so often in the 2000s?

3. Given we've been down since early December, I've been amazed at how competitive we've generally been. How often have we been awful this season? Villa at home, Watford at home, Man Utd and Wolves away. Four times. If I was being harsh, I could add the Burnley and West Ham games - but even if we were on course to stay up, we were always going to be powderpuff on our travels more often than not.

4. What we're trying to do - stay up while playing great football on a shoestring - is f**king hard. If it wasn't f**king hard, plenty of other sides would've done it. Instead, it took Swansea years and years to build a whole approach which delivered for them. We think we can do it in Year Three?!

5. Daniel Farke is a preparation manager. His strengths lie in overall style of play: getting it right and letting performances and results take care of themselves. There aren't many other coaches in Europe who could've done with us what he did last season. Now, let's see how he gets on next season.

6. We had someone who tried a much more pragmatic approach. It didn't 'fit' this club, so he failed and the fans turned mutinous. We are what we are. An overachieving yo-yo club whose fans expect positive, enterprising, attractive football; most of whose fans surely don't expect to stay in this league under these owners.

7. All of us on here want the same thing: for Norwich City to be as good as we can be. But football is not and will never be a rational pursuit. It's an emotional one. So people get angry, people get frustrated, people lash out. It's normal.

If, next season, we drift around the middle of the Championship, I'll be lashing out too. That's where my *line* is. I expect NCFC to be strong contenders for promotion. I don't expect us to stay in the world's richest league with cash poor owners. And given we conceded 57 goals even in a glorious season last year, nor should anyone else.

We can't defend; we don't have enough going forward; our style of play makes us vulnerable; we're not streetwise. We are what we are. We're absolutely amazing at promotion chases (we haven't failed in one since 2002!); we stink the place out at relegation battles, and both of those are natural flipsides of each other.

It's about next season for me. And if we make a success of that, we'll be better placed to give survival a much better shot in 2021/22.

Posted By: thebigfeller on February 23rd 2020 at 18:01:29

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