Get your head to the ground Ferret-style and there's only one thing that most people agree on – a date.
More on that in a minute. After that and this weekend, I hear, is the one where wheat and chaff go their seperate ways.
That the traditional list of hopefuls is replaced by a slimmed down list of genuine contenders among whom, you strongly suspect, will be names that no-one has either thought of or suspected. One of which may pop up later tonight.
So don't go far away.
Short-list decided on, it is then down to the serious nitty-gritty of full-scale interviews towards the middle of next week.
And if history is any guide, they won't be in Norfolk – they will be far from prying eyes down in London.
A chance for people to jet in, jet out again before they've ever been missed – a routine that suited at least one current, international manager this time last year.
But what adds extra urgency to the timetable is events of Thursday night – right back at Carrow Road. The club's Annual General Meeting.
Always likely to be a lively affair as shareholders got to meet the Turners en masse and with it, the opportunity to get a greater sense of where the club, financially, may be heading – at just what stage their 'project' was at – City's perilous league position will inevitably raise the temperature again.
As will the fact that they are currently managerless; as will the 'fact' – according to one or two of their detractors – that the board shows no ambition.
Put all the above together and if Ferret's money was going anywhere at this stage, it would be on an appointment that nips at least one of those accusations in the bud – ahead of Thursday night's AGM.
You go big and bold and roll – if not the man, but the name – out in front of your shareholders come Thursday night and the whole mood of that meeting will change.
Particularly if you killed a second bird with that appointment stone – by laying down a big marker as to where the Turners saw the club going and who, exactly, they fancied playing with their money.
Go in dithering, managerless and seemingly wholly adrift in the bottom three of the Championship and expect to be tossed about in some pretty rough seas.
That's what they'll do everything to avoid. That's why, in an ideal world, they'll want something or someone in place by Thursday.
And to do that, that will require all hands to the pump come the middle of next week. Diaries cleared, day jobs put on hold. You burn the midnight oil Tuesday-Wednesday and try and storm the ambition high ground before Thursday night's AGM.
That would be a logical battle plan; that's what you'd look for in an ideal world.
Of course, the world has rarely been ideal round here of late; if our boy is already in a job, you can watch that plan swiftly unfold.
One final tip. If I was to try and catch a potential new Norwich City manager heading for his interview this week, I wouldn't hang around Norfolk.
This time last year and two of the final three jetted in and out by plane. Go and park yourself by the baggage reclaim at Heathrow. Never know who you might spot.
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