There'll no doubt be a few people who'd suggest that the short training break to Spain this week wasn't conducive to the Canaries producing their best performance on Saturday.
Let's put that to bed straight away, because it would be wrong.
Norwich would undoubtedly have put in the same amount of time and effort on the training ground on the continent as they would have done had the stayed at home at a wind swept Colney ? probably more in actual fact – and it's hardly as though a two- hour flight would severely impact on the players' bodies.
However, there's no disputing the fact that for whatever reason yesterday, for 45 minutes City simply never got going.
Blackpool showed infinitely more guile, craft and quality in possession of the ball than Norwich.
They looked fitter, sharper and more aware than City. They scored two goals, could, and should, have added at least one more after easily navigating themselves goalside of the Canaries' rearguard to generate one versus one situations with David Marshall, and they generally out-played Norwich in every department of the pitch.
City fell asleep for Blackpool's opener. No-one reacted to Marshall's initial save and Stephen McPhee was gifted the first of his two strikes at the far post. McPhee simply gambled on the ball being kept alive whereas a four or five yellow shirts simply stood and watched.
But far from that opening goal waking City from their slumber, it didn't change events one little bit.
Blackpool continued to carve City apart every time they attacked, while at the other end Paul Rachubka in the visitor's goal was virtually untested.
McPhee doubled his tally and Blackpool's lead five minutes before the break, and the half-time whistle really couldn't come quickly enough for a bedraggled City who must have made their way back to their dressing room feeling like condemned men walking to the gallows knowing full well the verbal volley that they were about to receive from their manager.
It was much better from the Canaries after the break it must be said, although that was as good as a given considering the magnitude of their first-half ineptitude.
Suddenly Norwich were a couple of yards quicker than they had been in the opening period, but despite Jamie Cureton halving their deficit after the referee had awarded City a dubious penalty to stir things up a touch and finally make the contest more interesting, it didn't really change the general manner in which the game panned out.
Simon Grayson's men were still able to move the ball about the pitch with the same commendable efficiency as they had done all too frequently from the start despite finding themselves on the back foot for longer spells than had been the case earlier on, with Wes Hoolahan in particular being virtually unplayable at times.
Blackpool's diminutive playmaker was so creative and comfortable with the ball at his feet that you feared the worst when he was in possession, and many of the Seasiders' second-half goal-scoring chances emanated from the influential Irishman.
City huffed and puffed, but without ever managing to muster enough of a sustained period of pressure to overly trouble the visitors.
After all, whenever City threatened to grab an equaliser, so Blackpool promptly went down the other end of the pitch and threatened to put the game to bed once and for all with a third goal. Their victory was fully deserved.
No, forget about jet-lag, tiredness and all that. It was nothing to do with that at all. Norwich just didn't perform.
Thankfully they have been very few and far between since Glenn Roeder's arrival, but this was clearly a bad day at the office.
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