The season of goodwill towards all men can't come quick enough..

Now I think I may have an idea why Glenn Roeder came out with his already-infamous 'England manager' remark at last week's AGM.

Of course, the obvious explanation is that he's not a very nice man. After all, Neil Doncaster gave us fair warning of this, commenting at the time of his appointment that: 'We talked to a number of top people in the game� and certain phrases kept repeating themselves, whoever we talked to.

“Glenn may appear to be 'nice' � he's not�”'

But here's what I suspect may have happened. This was his first AGM at Norwich, and his previous experience of such meetings would have been at West Ham and Newcastle where, given the nature of their fans, such evenings are likely to be lively to say the least.

This alone may have led him to anticipate a verbal scrap. But on top of this, it was clear before the AGM that the board and the under-performing team were going to come in for strong criticism, so he probably got himself fired up to defend his corner and ended up getting his retaliation in first.

I've heard of this sort of thing happening before; I used to work with someone who told me a similar tale about his father.

He was asked by his wife to mow the lawn, and when he pointed out that their mower was broken, she suggested he should ask the man across the road if he could borrow his. He agreed, but with some reluctance since the man in question was a notoriously grumpy old character.

On the short walk across the road, he managed to convince himself that Mr Grumpy was bound to say no � and became incensed at this refusal even though it only existed inside his head.

He knocked at the door, Mr Grumpy opened it � and before the latter could say a word, my colleague's father said, 'You can stick your lawnmower up your a***,' then turned on his heel and went home.

Incidentally, while I'm explaining � but not excusing � injudicious remarks, I also have an idea why Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross left those offensive remarks on Andrew Sachs' answerphone.

It's probably best explained by an episode of the US sitcom 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' in which Larry causes huge offence by remarking that his friend's baby son has a large penis. When his wife asks him why on earth he said that, he simply replies: 'I took a risk'.

That, it seems to me, is what comedians do � if we are generous and call Russell Brand a comedian. (I think of him as a modern Tom O'Connor � he walks like a comedian and talks like a comedian but to the best of my knowledge has never said anything remotely funny.

(And no, I'm not jealous because he's got a football column in the Guardian and gets collections of his articles published in book form�)

But back to Glenn Roeder. While his remark at the AGM was out of order, it's not the one which has really got me worried this week. It's this one, which he came out with after the Swansea game:

'You work hard on it and it's so disappointing when they don't do as they're told� hopefully the penny will drop� it's just a total lack of football intelligence.'

It strikes me that calling your players thick in public is not a very good idea, which is why most managers don't do it. I've been trying to think of other examples, and only three have come to mind.

Sir Bobby Robson famously called Paul Gascoigne 'daft as a brush', though this was affectionate and wasn't a comment on Gazza's football intelligence. Then there was Gary Megson's remark about striker Jason Roberts � 'You are talking about a man who spelt his name wrongly on his transfer request' � though I believe he may have said that after Roberts had left.

But this is the closest and most relevant example:

'We worked on it yesterday, we worked on it the day before, we worked on it the day before that. We told them exactly what they [the opposition] would do, and they weren't bright enough to see it off.'

If those words sound familiar, they should. They were spoken by Peter Grant just after the game at QPR last season (and just before he resigned).

While things aren't that bad just yet � we're still a comparatively lofty 19th in the table � Roeder is starting to sound a bit desperate. And blaming his tools, if we can call them that, is not going to inspire confidence among fans or players.

It may have been an honest opinion � but accusing someone of lacking intelligence is a particularly unwise thing to do if the person in question really does lack intelligence; as the Kevin Kline character in A Fish Called Wanda demonstrates, stupid people tend to take being called stupid very badly.

It's certainly a frustrating time at the moment, but I don't think despair is called for just yet. As I think I said around this time last year, the standard of the Championship is pretty poor, and you don't even have to be half-decent to pick up points.

We don't need to improve that much to move up the table � and our current squad, loan players and all, is stronger than last season's even with the injuries and suspensions.

Actually, I've been wondering whether losing a few more players might do the trick. Sometimes a team can click when circumstances dictate changes that would otherwise not be made.

This was certainly the case with the England team in the '86 and '90 World Cup finals, though Bobby Robson doesn't seem to remember it that way.

In his foreword to the Guardian Book of Football, he says: 'I still maintain that if we'd had Bryan Robson fit for 1986 and 1990, I could have trumped Sir Alf Ramsey and won two World Cups'. As I recall, it was only once Captain Marvel got injured that England started to play well.

A lot of supporters seem to think that City are an accident waiting to happen; if we are, let's hope it's an accidental discovery of the right formula.