Under-fire City boss Peter Grant admitted that the chorus of boos that greeted this evening's final whistle hurt.
As, you suspect, would the furious chants of 'What a load of rubbish!' and 'You don't know what you're doing!' that greeted Wade Small's 75th minute winner as the Canaries slumped to a 1-0 home defeat to bottom of the table Sheffield Wednesday.
Once again the Carrow Road club had fluffed nigh-on every line once the TV cameras started to roll – the natives' fast-growing disenchantment being beamed live into bars and living rooms across the land.
“There's nothing I can say to say that we didn't deserve it,” admitted Grant, with Wednesday's winner being a particularly gruesome car crash of a goal – everyone in the stadium could see what was about to happen as a statuesque City defence let the visitors ping the ball between them with all too inevitable consequences.
A 40-minute dressing room inquest followed. Norwich have now lost their last four games and have gone six hours without scoring a goal. And they have still only played only one of the top ten 'form' teams – Charlton.
“We've lost another game at home – games that we shouldn't be losing,” said Grant. “So I can understand the criticism.
“And I don't like it one bit. I want everybody to be singing their names and giving them all the praise that's going. That's the way that I want it to be – I want this place to be rocking.
“And, as I say, I understand their frustrations and it becomes typical manager-speak if I say anything else – and I don't want to go down that line. But if you go to a show and you don't like it, you're critical of it.
All you can do is work at it; dig in; stick together and look for a corner to turn. “I can't work any harder at it – trying to make it better; trying to get the victories; try to get them back-to-back to give them the confidence that we're trying to get.
“And at the end of the day, if you're not confident in anything in life, you'll always struggle. And at this moment in time we seem to have too many players lacking that little bit of belief and that little bit of confidence.”
Where that injection of confidence is going to come from is anyone's guess – Dion Dublin's return from suspension ought to help. A cool head in a crisis is just one of the Canaries' many pressing needs.
And while the season may still be only eight games old, the atmosphere come the end was certainly one of a good, old fashioned, Carrow Road crisis with fingers inevitably starting to point in all directions as a summer of many an expectation on the back of those nine new arrivals swiftly starts to unravel.
Once again Grant found himself having to defend his team selections – this time in the case of Darel Russell.
Part of a pretty effective three-man midfield away at the City of Manchester Stadium on Tuesday night, the City boss would have earned himself many a brownie point for keeping faith with the two youngsters, Michael Spillane and Rossi Jarvis.
Both received big welcomes from the home faithful before kick-off. But then out went Russell – relegated to the bench as Simon Lappin switched back into midfield from left-back. As did Lee Croft who, for many, had enjoyed one of his best nights away at his former Premiership employers.
“I just thought we'd be able to keep the ball better,” said the City boss quizzed on Russell's absence, hoping that a three man midfield of Lappin, Spillane and Jarvis would have one more pass in them that the two man opposition of Owls skipper Steve Watson and the on-loan Graham Kavanagh.
And into that thinking Russell didn't fit as Grant continues to cast around for a balanced midfield. A lack of match sharpness after a pre-season spent on the sidelines at Stoke also played on the manager's mind.
As, afterwards, did the question of whether he'd made the right decision in the first place.
“Because of the way he's (Russell) come in with his fitness – and you'll have seen it yourselves a few times – he's been caught with the ball under his feet and not been able to move it quick enough and sometimes that can come down to not having had enough games,” said Grant.
“But I just felt today that we could get away with Michael and Rossi in there because of the way that Sheffield Wednesday had two central midfielders and I thought we could just get that extra pass in.
“And to some extent that worked. But do you take away from that and bring Darel in with his spirit and everything else?” added Grant, who decided to leave Julien Brellier out of the 16 altogether despite the Frenchman being eligible again after serving his one-match ban.
Once again you sensed it might be back to the drawing board ahead of Tuesday night's home clash with newly-promoted Scunthorpe United whose 1-0 away win at Colchester United took them to the heady heights of sixth in the table.
And while that might only be two small wins away from where Norwich now sit – six points and 15 places behind the Irons – you strongly suspect that the two teams are miles apart confidence-wise as Scunthorpe continue to have the time of their autumn lives in the higher flight.
“Maybe that's a question that I've got ask myself – I've got to look at that now,” said Grant, as he pondered that ever-changing midfield ahead of Tuesday night's crunch contest and what one mix brought him and what the other didn't.
Trouble is, neither mix has brought him a result. And without a result, it is the nature of the modern managerial beast to find your every tactical thought and move pored over and debated endlessly. That's what people do when you lose four games on the spin. You can play 1-8-1 and no-one would bat an eye-lid – if you were winning.
“I can't have it both ways. I want to pass,” he mused out loud. “But that wasn't happening when Darel and Julien (Brellier) were on the pitch.
“So I went another way to try and force us to pass it; we done that the other evening well and we did it for periods of today's game well – but you've got to be able to do that all the time.
“It's tough. You're trying to manoeuvre it to make us play. Make us play; make us be positive; make us win. And that's what we've got to continue to try and do – to get a team capable of winning and playing well.”
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