Stan made the trip to QPR last Tuesday, more out of habit than anything, and witnessed a scrappy one nil against the odds victory.
Fair enough, we scrapped and battled and ultimately emerged victorious, but on the balance of play, three times out of four, we'd have lost that game. Indeed had a first minute chance been buried by the Hoops, as it should have been, City would have been beaten comfortably.
Post match celebrations were tempered with large doses of 'I'm not convinced about this…'
A forward line that has never played together before and has a mighty ..ooh?. is it three??goals between them, is hardly going to give future opponents sleepless nights.
With this fear in mind Stan, unable to undertake (couldn't face!) the tortuous trip North, settled down to listen to seemingly forever doom laden, Chris and Neil show.
And so it came to pass that the flicker of hope that was ignited in the rain of Shepherds Bush was snuffed out by a giant stick of rock with the word 'relegation' scribed straight through the middle a mere four days later.
Stan's fears were played out all to graphically against a side who hadn't scored in three or won in six we produced a pathetic display that showed the very worst of the present crop of Canaries.
More big pre-match talk, followed by a pathetic performance and a nigh on fatal blow to any chances we have of playing in the Championship next season.
Undoubtedly there will be more twists and turns to come in the few weeks ahead but, Stan is resigned to them being of the sort a plane does when it's just had it's tail shot off!
Had we been in a position of safety, the arrival this week of an untried Irishman would have interested Stan. He's the sort of uncut diamond that may just come good, sadly when the signing of such a player is effectively the last throw of the dice it brings not much more than a wry shake of the head.
When we needed to sign a Ched, Gunny pulled a Mooney.
Ditto the Fotheringham situation, a mere distraction from the greater calamity that is going on around. This Stan is glad to see the back of him as a player and a captain, but his ousting is hardly likely to make any real difference at such a late stage.
Signed by an atrocious manager, promoted to captain by the club's all time most arrogant, and thrown into the wilderness as the trap-door to Division Three looms. He was hardly Barry Butler was he?
With or without him the whole squad seems so fundamentally flawed that tinkering with formations, changing captains and adding untried personnel seems little more than fiddling with the deckchairs as SS Norwich slips beneath the waves into the icy waters beneath.
There are glaring weaknesses to us left, right and centre? we can't defend, we can't score and we possess absolutely no consistency.
Regardless of who has handed out the bibs at Colney the same problems have remained. The regime of the horribly stubborn and flawed man that was Roeder, has been replaced by a great man, but sadly one of glaring inexperience. When the 'new manager bounce' didn't happen you sensed we were doomed.
Stan holds his hands up, he welcomed Gunny to the hot seat with open arms and an optimism of the blind variety, rather than one based on reason. He hoped against hope that for once the good guy would win.
Sadly, hamstrung by an inherently poor squad and no money the finale looks likely to be more Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid than The Great Escape.
Fair enough, maybe right now Stan should be stood atop a table, beating his chest and issuing a mighty rallying cry?. 'Come on, we can do this, we can win six out of nine'?. but in honesty he doesn't believe we will get close. Looking at the fixtures remaining we'll do very well to reach 47 points and it's looking like it's going to take a good 52 to survive.
This doesn't make Stan a lily-livered quitter, just a realist.
The 'Where did it all go wrong?' debate can be done to death in months and years ahead but one thing's for certain, we won't be looking at another abject, early spring performance in Blackpool as the reason for our plight. It was a mere symptom, not the cause.
Leave a Reply