They say a week is a long time in football. And this has been one spectacular week at Carrow Road – even by City's standards.
Since August 8th, we've seen a 7-1 drubbing at home to Colchester, a 4-0 away success in the Carling Cup (how often can we say that about the Canaries?) and Bryan Gunn getting the boot.
I don't know about you but I feel exhausted just thinking about it. But one thing is for sure, the timing of today's twist in the tail is certainly baffling.
Whether Gunn was the right man for the job was up for debate. But to take this action, on the eve of an important League One clash is strange.
After the Colchester debacle, fair enough. But on a Friday afternoon, three days after your team has bounced back in style? There might well be more to this than meets the eye.
Whether Messrs Butterworth and Crook will be around after this weekend's encounter will be an interesting one. Crook may fancy the gig full-time, and they could do a lot worse.
Butterworth may go for it too. But with the sudden timing of today's announcement, you do wonder whether David McNally and Co already have someone lined up.
However, one thing the Canary XI chosen for action tomorrow mustn't do is take their eye off the ball.
There will be an Exeter City side baying for blood come 3pm, hurting after their very own home shocker ? a 5-0 St James Park defeat to QPR in midweek.
And boss Paul Tisdale is confident his side can 'do a Norwich' and recover from their recent miseries.
“We're going to be stretched and we're going to have weaknesses highlighted because of the level we're playing at now,” the double promotion-winning boss told BBC Devon.
“It's going to be a fast learning curve, but I think we're up to the challenge. We have to remain competitive even if we are having our limits pushed.
“The beauty of getting promoted is that you go up against teams that are better than the league you were in before, so it's a problem that we want to have.”
The League One new-boys haven't got off to the best of starts. Even though a 2-1 opening day defeat to Leeds is no disgrace, getting tonked in the week won't have helped confidence levels, even if was at the hands of the 'Man City of the Championship'.
“It's all coming thick and fast and we just need to make sure we don't get damaged mentally by losing a couple of games.”
Speaking before today's Canary sacking, Tisdale warned his players not to pay too much attention to last weekend's capitulation. As far as he is concerned, the Canaries are a decent outfit.
“Norwich are a terrific team with good players and we should read very little into last week's result because they beat Yeovil 4-0 on Tuesday, so which one do you take?
“We'll have the upmost respect for them but there's no reason why we can't get a win.”
The Grecians boss did, however, admit that he would like all his starting XI to stay on the pitch this time around, after the Devon club saw red in both their opening 09/10 fixtures.
“We've not yet played a game with a full team for 90 minutes so that's made life harder for us,” Tisdale added.
“But the players have to be resilient and we have to remain competitive even if we are having our limits pushed.
“Whilst we remain competitive it buys us time to come up with a strategy to start being successful.”
Tom Haylett
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