The season was largely injury-free for the squad and meant that Farke's only real selection headache was keeping those on the sidelines happy while they waited for their chance. The fans had well and truly bought into the project and roared the team on both home and away, truly becoming a 12th man on the pitch. All these factors gave us all optimism for the Premier League campaign. We'd stayed up in the past with squads less promising than this one. I truly believed we were set for a barnstorming season and could gatecrash the top half with a prevailing wind in our favour. Unfortunately, the weather has been mostly stormy typhoons and we find ourselves shipwrecked back where we started.
We could have fared well in the 2019-2020 season if one or two of the elements behind our success had dimmed, but luck was well and truly against us. We won friends after our second half performance against Liverpool on the opening day, we then beat Newcastle at home in our next match after a Teemu Pukki hat-trick but then Chelsea narrowly beat us 3-2 and Crawley Town knocked us out the FA Cup. Immediately injuries began to stack up in comically large numbers. We resorted to a midfielder in defence and two goalkeepers on the bench when we somehow managed to beat Manchester City 3-2 at Carrow Road. It was one of the greatest games and atmospheres I've experienced probably because of the low expectations everyone had going into it. Man City are the result of millions upon millions of pounds of investment. Our plucky shoestring team went toe to toe with them and came away with the three points. Incredible scenes that would seem more and more incredible as the season progressed.
When the transfer window had closed we only had four recognised centre backs at the club, three of which were injured. Hindsight is a wonderful thing of course, but any kind of central defensive cover might have helped. We even loaned out our own Raggett, Famewo, Heisse and Bashiri leaving us with such a shallow pool of cover. Weirdly, the January transfer window saw us cancel the loan of one of the defensive midfielders we had used as an emergency central defender and signed no replacement at all. We were playing a patched up, make-shift defence against the best strikers in the world.
In the Championship our recruitment had been beyond perfect; Teemu Pukki and Tim Krul on free transfers, Emi Buendia for £1.5million...ridiculously good business.
Our Premier League transfers were a more mixed bag; The loans of Patrick Roberts, Ralf Fahrmann and Ibrahim Amadou were all cancelled midway through the season after barely making any appearances and Ondrej Duda quit as soon as relegation was confirmed. We signed Sam McCallum and immediately loaned him back to Coventry City. Lukas Rupp and Josip Drmic have both struggled to adjust from the Bundesliga to the Premier League. The only experienced Premier League player we signed has been Sam Byram and he has been impressive when he's played, but injuries have reduced that to just 17 appearances. Stuart Webber said that the club had sent Daniel Farke to war without a gun. Only Byram, Hanley, Krul and Tettey had ever played at this level before and they were some of our better performers throughout the season. If we'd only brought in a couple of Premier League players to improve the group, ah who knows?
This defensive frailty meant midfielders who previously had been able to break the lines and join the attack were now having to hold their position a bit deeper to support the defence. The fullbacks and wingers who bombed forward so effectively in the Championship were now being pegged back more often than not. The Stiepermann centre forward/attacking midfielder role had become virtually a third central midfielder which starved our goal hungry Pukki of support. 11 goals is still a great tally in the top tier but they were heavily weighted towards the first half of the campaign. As the campaign wore on the injuries continued to pile up and VAR seemed to enjoy deliberately undermining us with spite. For example: Teemu Pukki's armpit being ruled offside against Spurs.
We were still playing creditably. Opposition managers would tell us that our position at the foot of the table was deceptive and we were described as "the best team to be bottom of the league at Christmas". That was one accolade I could have done without. I don't believe anyone could doubt the effort of the players, it just seemed that our squad lacked the depth necessary at this level. There weren't player on the bench who could affect much change in the game. However, we were considered to be in a false position that would right itself when we hit our tasty run of winnable home games towards the end of the season. Theeeeeeeeeeeen COVID19 struck...
...I'm only going to focus on the sporting world but it may take years to fully understand the devastation this caused to football. Will some clubs ever recover from the financial impact? All the stats suggest that Norwich City did not react well to the post-covid landscape. If you're at the bottom and scrapping, you need your fans to help you stand taller and fight harder. Even things as seemingly inconsequential as Daniel Farke's post match appreciation applause for the fans meant that losses felt more divisive and lingered longer. Supporters were denied the opportunity to support. The One City Strong message felt a bit hollow. Norwich City Football Club is much more than 11 blokes on a field, but we were reduced to being just that during a vital period in our season.
Lockdown was hardest on one player in particular. Teemu Pukki was all set to lead his country into the European Championship for the first time this summer. He is their goalscoring hero and at the peak of his career. His family and his whole country will have been gearing up for it. The suddenly the rug is pulled and it's another year away and he's just about to hit 30 and doubts will enter his mind about what position and condition he might be in going into that tournament.
The season will be regarded as a failure because we've ended up bottom of the league. That doesn't tell the whole story, luck had deserted us entirely. The fact that so many players are so coveted suggests we're on the right track. Perhaps we did an Icarus and flew too high with patched up wax wings that ended up melting. Perhaps we'd cleared out the bargain bin and all that was left was other peoples unwanted junk. With older players our transfer policy has always been "Oh he's not working for you? We'll have a go". I feel the whole season was undermined by defensive injuries, which you can either write off as bad luck or you could argue that they should have been mitigated against with some cover. If not in August, then certainly in January when we reduced our defensive cover rather than increased it.
In my view, the club is definitely in the right hands. Delia and the board have proven their credentials time and again. Stuart Webber has a brilliant football brain and I could listen to him talking about football in general for hours. He talks so much sense and has such a clear idea about the right way forward. While we have him, we're incredibly lucky to do so. Daniel Farke can feel fairly aggrieved at the lack of finances afforded to him this year by Ben Kensall. Peculiarly it's looking as if we may have a bigger budget next season in the Championship than we did in the Premier League. I hope he realises that he is massively appreciated in Norfolk and continues to manage the club. Stuart Webber has said he expects him to remain because of the way he's planning for next season. Farke saved the club by developing James Maddison and has developed 4 more young players into valuable assets meaning the club is in rude financial health.
So, I wanted to end on some positives:
If we're going to get relegated, at least we haven't had to listen to the endless "that's why you're going down!" chants from away fans.
Lewis, Aarons, Buendia, Godfrey and Cantwell are all worth double what they were before now they have Premier League experience.
Maybe Pukki's form will put off potential suitors over the summer and he'll be back amongst the goals for us next year.
Maybe the kits will be better next season?
Maybe we'll actually be allowed into the stadium at some point next season? October perhaps?
Ipswich are still in League One. Thank you Agent Lambert.
When I think back to all my favourite seasons of supporting Norwich the vast majority of them were in the Championship...so there's that...sort of.
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