Quick Debrief

It's been a little while since I ventured any thoughts on my Norwich City. There's no exciting reasons behind that, it's certainly not through a lack of discussion points regarding the club. Since I last blogged we've had a season of Premiership football in which we drifted towards a fairly inevitable relegation. We had a strong enough team to stay up, enough of that squad are playing Premiership football with other teams now to suggest that it wasn't a quality issue. Clubs are reflections of their managers and we were a naïve club without a clear footballing identity. Success towards the bottom of the league is built on learning the lessons of a defeat and putting the result behind you quickly, but we'd have sucker punch results like the Liverpool one or the Newcastle one that would see us suffer hangovers for too many games afterwards.

The same happened last year, we were doing brilliantly in the league despite not playing all that well and then Newcastle opened up our old "inability to hold on for a result" wound and we started to free-fall. In his post-match press conference Alex Neil would name individuals who he felt had let him down which is never a healthy thing for a manager to do. A good team win and lose as one. Even Alex Neil seemed genuinely surprised to still be employed towards the end of his tenure. Then Alan Irvine came in and settled things down. Think about it, at the start of that season we had Robbie Brady, Alex Pritchard, Josh Murphy, Jacob Murphy, Wes Hoolahan and James Maddison....HOW did Neil fail to get us promoted?

Anyway, that's the past dealt with, onto now:

I really like Daniel Farke. I think he seems like a very intelligent man who speaks better in his second language than some managers do in their first language. He is genuinely easier to understand than Peter Grant, admit it. I loved the way he handled the embarrassing Nelson shirt celebration issue. I would like him to have been able to have an experienced Championship coach amongst his coaching staff to be able to call on. Someone who could have quietly suggested 2 defensive-minded midfielders might help against Millwall.  He's having to learn an awful lot about the division awfully fast. I think he's great though, I also bloody love the FarkeLife chant. Best crowd song EVER. Kudos goes to the various fan groups making a concerted effort to improve the vocal support on the terraces this year. It's having a huge effect. Although I have always dreamt that one day we'll sing Yellow Submarine by The Beatles..."WE ALL FOLLOW THE YELLA AND THE GREEN, THE YELLA AND THE GREEN, THE YELLA AND THE GREEN" Imagine the Barclay bouncing along to that on a matchday. Someone make that happen.

SO here are some more random unconnected thoughts:

Stuart Webber is a very impressive leader on the footballing side and Steve Stone seems to be doing a brilliant job of keeping the finances manageable.

Russell Martin is an international, our club captain and our second longest serving player behind Wes, he's helped get us promoted 3 times, he deserves so much better than the pathetic booing from some "supporters". Anyway...

I didn't really get the shock regarding our new shirt sponsors. We were sponsored by Fosters Lager not so long ago and we play in the SkyBet Championship...I can't say I was hypnotized into using Aviva, Flybe, Norwich & Peterborough Building Society or Lotus just because they sponsored us. Although Lotus would have been okay actually.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the season, I think it would be incredible if we were to finish in the top two, but the top six should be achievable with the talent we have in our squad.