One of the things that Stan finds most annoying about football pundits – on TV and in print – is their tendency to judge every team by its last result.
Manchester United can lose one game having been unbeaten for some ten, 12 or more, and the 'experts' talk – in all seriousness – about a wobble; even about a 'crisis'.
Mark my words, if Newcastle win their next game then the pundits will be talking of recovery and the 'Shearer effect'.
Think back to our own, fateful Premiership season, and the winning of the pre-Fulham home game led the sofa on Football Focus to talk about us having the quality to stay in the top flight.
All rubbish of course.
Like newspapers generally, pundits rarely consider their subject in the broader context and never have their opinions assessed in hindsight.
To slightly re-contextualise Stanley Baldwin's comment about old Beaverbrook, power without responsibility has always been the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages. It was true in 1930 and its true now.
Stan, therefore, as a true fan, knows very well that his joy at The Doc's well-deserved winner does not herald survival for our fine City, nor the beginning of a new dawn in Norwich's football history.
Similarly, Stan tried hard not to conclude that defeat at Swansea was the final nail in our coffin.
Take the Gunny-era in context and we are continuing to stutter towards the season's finishing line. Stan would argue that things – generally – have improved since Don Logan left; but a change in City's fortunes was never, ever, going to be so simple a matter of replacing the manager.
We are where we are for a whole host of reasons; Worthy, Grant and Roeder were not of themselves the only 'problem' with the post-Premiership
Canary model. As such, Gunny will not of himself be the solution.
Hopefully, he will lead the way towards the slow and steady revival of our club.
But it will be difficult and – to state the obvious – much will depend on what happens in the next three weeks.
As it is, the last three days brought a frustratingly average City performance at Swansea and a battling, well-deserved victory against Watford. There is, without doubt, some fight left in the club.
In Alan Lee, we have at last found a man capable of filling Iwan's boots – a leader and a character whose signature the board should sell one of their houses to secure.
Lee was phenomenal against Watford; a cut above every other player on the pitch.
The Doc, too, along with Shacks, put in what is fast becoming his obligatory solid performance; Gow looked imaginative; Clingan and Russel huffed and puffed in the middle to ensure that we dominated without ever really controlling.
All in all, we did enough to put ourselves back in the mix.
No doubt, we shall cock up in at least one of the remaining three matches; no doubt, we shall get some more points from somewhere. Will it be enough? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, Stan needs to ponder a problem and pay tribute to a legend in the process.
A while back, when Shacks was on the official City pay-roll, he and The Doc made for a poor centre-back partnership. They could never cope with teams who ran at them, or between them; they always conceded. Now, however, the two of them look as solid as they come.
They have certainly helped keep more clean sheets than any other of our multiple centre-back pairings this season.
Why is this? Is it Shacks gaining some nous and some maturity during his time at Wolves? Perhaps it is that Jon O and Bertrand have been told by Butterworth to no longer try and play their way out from the back?
Maybe, we have been practising the lost art of getting tight to the man? Or is it because Championship clubs seem to have done away with wingers?
The solid banks of 4-4-2 predominate – to succeed in the Championship is to remain solid, well-organised, and not to concede.
As a result, Doc and Shacks are no longer being pulled this way and that in order to cover the latest in our long-line of fragile full-backs.
They stay put and deal with what comes; no winger no problem. Stan is not convinced by this, but something has changed and he is not sure what.
Which leads, in a roundabout way, to Stan paying tribute to one of our own.
Norwich has long been a team that extols the virtues of the wide man.
Hucks, of course, Eadie, Fox, Gordon, Barham. But back in the 1970s, Stan's first ever 'favourite player' was Jimmy Neighbour. Bought from Spurs, he was fast, incisive and skilful. When he picked up the ball, the crowd surged forward in expectation.
Imagine the way we used to feel when Hucks got the ball, but instead of inching forward on a bit of plastic you moved as part of the mass, closing in onto the pitch in order to will the ball forward.
The crowd breathed in time to Jimmy Neighbour; the genius of Martin Peters reflected off Jimmy Neighbour; and the Barclay sang as one to the wonders of 'Jimmy, Jimmy Neighbour, Jimmy Neighbour on the wing'. A great man, a Norwich legend, and a true hero.
The world is a sadder place without him.
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