It’s 2018. The footballing festivities have reached their conclusion and the annual FA Cup third round weekend has just been contested. Manchester City are dominant in the Premier League. Theresa May is Prime Minister. Brexit is still happening. Everything, apart from one thing, remains the same.
Alan Irvine is in charge of Norwich City. Meanwhile, Daniel Farke continues to exist as an anonymity, bellowing orders at his Borussia Dortmund II team but largely remaining a figure ubiquitously unheard of amongst the outside world. Farke is a good coach, diligently disciplining his side and leading them to reasonable success in the German fourth division. He still awaits his opportunity at a bigger, potentially English club.
Events at Carrow Road are different, however. The structural changes of March last year have still occurred. The impressive Steve Stone remains in charge as Manging Director, working closely alongside the ambitiously-appointed Stuart Webber. But rather than the radical change we have witnessed since May, City’s fortunes have instead been characterised by a greater sense of continuity, manifest in the appointment of Alan Irvine as permanent manager following his successful spell as Caretaker.
How are we faring? Relatively well. Irvine is a solid manager, far from a tactical genius but one who is adept enough to extract consistently impressive performances from his players. He knows the league. He knows the English game. City fans have faith in him to deliver.
This article, of course, is entirely hypothetical. I – just like the rest of us – am clueless about what life at Norwich City would currently be looking like without the presence of Daniel Farke and the subsequent Germanic influx.
Recently, however, and in light of our team’s inability to deliver on anywhere near like a consistent enough basis, I have been thinking about the other routes the club’s top brass could have taken towards the twilight of last season.
There was never any talk of Alan Irvine succeeding Alex Neil on a permanent basis. He was never seriously considered by the board, fans nor the wider footballing community as the man to inherit our formerly ageing squad and transform it into a viable Championship force.
However, his appointment would have been a safe choice. He possessed the skills required to succeed in the division. With hindsight, the drastic change of last summer may not have been what was necessary in order to secure a return to the top flight.
Many of you reading this will invariably be perplexed. I don’t blame you. The notion that Irvine should be in charge of City does seem ridiculous, particularly given our recent – albeit slow – improvement and the emergence of more promising signs from Farke’s team. But let’s look at the facts…
Under Irvine, our record was good, winning five, drawing two and losing three of his ten games in charge. One of those draws came against Blackburn, the day after Neil’s departure and thus providing Irvine with a mere matter of hours to prepare his team. The other was at Leeds on the penultimate day, throwing away a three-goal lead after a majestic first-half performance that saw City play with a flair, tempo and dynamism that a Neil-led side failed to ever deliver on the road.
The defeats came against good sides: Fulham, Huddersfield and Aston Villa. However, it was the performances during his tenure that were more revealing, with City appearing considerably more organised, resolute and tenacious while still playing with the attacking verve we demonstrated in so much abundance under Neil at Carrow Road.
Seven goals were scored on that remarkable April day when Reading travelled to the Fine City, while the displays witnessed against Preston, Brighton and Queens Park Rangers were saturated with similar levels of creativity.
Summer change would still have been required under Irvine’s leadership. The recruitment of capable Championship defenders was critical, while the replacement of Jonny Howson and the signing of an additional forward – the latter of which failed to happen anyway – was of equal significance. Irvine was surely aware of this.
Let’s not forget, this is a man who recognised the supreme talent of James Maddison and liberated him from the pitches of Colney, simultaneously allowing Alex Pritchard an extended run in the side and enabling him to find that sparkling form he has shown recent signs of emulating this season.
An Irvine side would not look radically different to the one we find ourselves with now. Yes, he may have been more reluctant to embrace Webber’s German scouting mission that Farke was. However, was such a radical policy even required?
In City’s current best XI, only Angus Gunn, Grant Hanley, and Tom Tybull were not at the club last season. Granted, there was a considerable amount of deadwood, but the extreme change of personnel seen with that influx of players was in no way necessary. Defending was our principal shortcoming last season. In hindsight, smaller and subtler change was what was required; the acquisition of a reliable centre-half or two to partner Timm Klose and the blooding of youth such as the flourishing Jamal Lewis.
The fundamental difference under Irvin’s leadership would be the team’s direction, with the former providing City with a more experienced, orthodox and purposeful Championship approach instead of the latter’s obstinate insistence on patient, laboured, possession-based football that appears to have stifled our goal scoring threat.
Look at Cardiff. Look at Derby. Look at Sheffield United and Aston Villa. It is no coincidence that the majority of the division’s top sides are managed by experienced, British managers. Farke had no idea what this league entailed. Indeed, it is likely that City under Irvine would be sitting significantly higher up the table than Farke’s team are today.
Sixteen points from his difficult ten games in charge was a decent return. The team he achieved that with will have been improved over the summer: made more solid, made slightly younger, made fitter and made hungrier for success. Irvine is a good coach with an approachable demeanour, a man aware of what needed to change at the club and one with the requisite experience to implement it effectively. More generally, he should never have been allowed to leave at all.
This isn’t an ode to Alan Irvine. Nor is it even a piece fervently arguing that he should have been appointed City manager on a permanent basis. Instead, it is merely an expression of the fact that the radical change we experienced last summer may have not been what was most conducive to achieving promotion in this crucial season. We are all acutely aware of the financial obstacles that will confront the club should a return to the top flight not be attained. Such a scenario looks likely to ensue.
I really do hope Webber’s faith in Farke will pay dividends and lead to some form of long-term success. Having been at St Andrew’s, The Pirelli, the Millwall game and the visit of Chelsea on Saturday, we are showing palpable signs of improvement.
However, with such notable inconsistency appearing to have become an inherent characteristic of this team combined with the potentially-imminent departure of our two most creative players, optimism concerning any form of ascent up the table remains limited.
I may be completely wrong. Perhaps Irvine was never cut out to be City manager. Regardless, pondering on where our club may be under a more conventional, experienced and domestically-nurtured form of leadership remains a thought-provoking task that may render Webber’s apparent boldness of the summer a fatal mistake.
An excellent and original read, Will.
Interestingly, Irvine was quoted more than once as saying he didn’t want the job permanently full stop.
Will,
You make a very good point. I have thought, on similar lines, where would we be if we had gone for Gary Rowett when he was available until March 2017, as many fans wanted. Appointing another inexperienced coach and drifting around in the bottom half of the table has brought additional problems. Players who joined expecting us to be, at least, challenging for promotion have been disappointed and will not sit around hoping for this to come right – as we are likely to see with Pritchard.
In view of the financial situation the club found itself in when they realised promotion in 2017 was not a possibility, appointing an experienced manager to complete the job in 2018 would have been a lot less risky.
A fantastic article Will – I wrote comments to the same effect in regards to having British backroom staff for when Farke arrived to help him gauge the league the other day and got lambasted for it! Glad I’m not the only one of this opinion!
Interesting thoughts, but I think many fans would have thought of Irvine as being an unambitious appointment which would have been a continuation of AN’s tenure.
The appointment of Farke and the promise of a different direction for the club was largely welcomed. The revolution was never going to be completed in half a year-even when we had our good run Webber was warning that there would be more difficult times ahead. I don’t really expect our recent goodish run to provide a platform for a push into the play-offs; a finish somewhere close to where we are now is much more likely and I doubt that, given that player recruitment would have been similar , Irvine or any other manager would have being doing significantly better.
I’m still veering between optimism and doubt, but I think I always have!
Finances are central to all of this and could not have allowed for a different scenario, even Irvine was too expensive and DF was as cheap as German chips and therefore, unequivocally, the man for the job.
The “impressive” (as you call him) Steve Stone, for me, is the financial hurdle amongst all of this and central to our regression into championship mediocrity while the Webbernator strikes me as no hurdler (no offence Stu). You only have to listen to Steve Stone to know his sole focus is to make the journey downhill less bumpy, as opposed to throwing caution to the wind in any sense whatsoever.
I have worked for some incredibly foolish companies in my time, but not one of them appointed a Financial Director as the head honcho and with very fine reason. Quite the opposite in fact. They were there to be listened to, but not taken too seriously. They operate outside of the realms of emotion and a feel for a deal, which is conducive to growth in any industry, but most of all football.
Mr Stone’s numbers will be driving this transition with a dash of hope something miraculous happens. I don’t blame him, I just blame another stupid decision at the top made without the knowledge of just about how anything operates, let alone business.
You can hope all you like, but this will not be fruitful long term. The majority of fans cried for change (me included) and weren’t sure what that was, but blindly hoping this board has made a wise choice long term is a joke even Mr Cooper couldn’t have deliver with comedic effect.
Jeff, I worked for the largest chemical company in the world for exactly 20 years, creating, managing and producing their employee-related publications. Plus other stuff.
It’s not on my MFW backstory – it’s not relevant to the site as we’re strictly about football.
But I did learn this much: do a good job and the bean counters will back you. They don’t want a good thing turning bad over just a few quid. Sure when you’re a middle manager you need a decent director with influence who understands you and fights for you at Board level. I rarely had a problem.
One example is enough: you want more Company news going out to the folks, more pages full of content, more old-style print costs? Then pay for them. Which they did when it was justified in terms they understood, as in value for money. The sprat nearly always caught the mackerel.
Which is why I’m still giving this set-up more time.
Even if only because the Company I am referring to is intrinsically German:-)
I for one thought at the time that Alan should have been offered the job. Things improved greatly with him in charge. We did not need to change things that drastically.
He (Alan Irvine) more than once said he didn’t want the job. I think I know why:-)
I think it was more of a case of he said that he would not apply for the job. they are 2 very different things.
I thought he said he didn’t want the same job that he had.
No, he said he didn’t want the manager’s job. Whether he meant it or not, the job that Alex Neil had doesn’t exist in the new structure
Maybe Matt but I’ll stick with my version.
As I recall he said he wanted another crack at management and then went off to be number two at, erm…
He simply didn’t fancy it here imo. I can only repeat that I understand why.
No experienced British manager would come to NCFC unless utterly desperate.
Word gets around…
Great post.
I was also recently thinking about Irvine, in the sense that I think almost any manager would have achieved more with the current squad that Farke.
Delia used her veto to overrule the boards decision to sack Neil and the end of 2016. Neil was left to plough a barren field for a while longer until he boxed himself into a corner. Irvine then comes in to put out the flames of despair, though he never claimed to feed us Loaves and Fish.
Irvine pleasantly surprised me, the football was fairly good and we did reasonably well. Had he had been given the role in January, then who knows what may have happened? Like many however, I didn’t want him in the role full time as I wanted something MORE. And as pointed out, he didn’t (publicly at least) want the job. He was too wise to see what NCFC was and what its problems were. Had he have seen a crack in the clouds, then maybe, just maybe, been tempted. Whatever you view of Irvine, the man is a professional. Professionals want to work with and under Professionals, if you see what I mean.
The fact still remains that the club went for a different, risky and cheap option when crucially it didn’t need to. It needed a manager with Championship nous to give the complacent squad a kick up the arse. Instead, it went for Farke, which was the League One approach in the Championship. Great thinking again by the board. Not.
I wonder what Irvine thinks of all this?
Will – I am not sure what Steve Stone has done to earn your description of being “impressive”,
However he certainly faces a challenging situation over the next few years in which he will get ample opportunity to demonstrate his abilities. Stone’s task will be to ensure the Club’s bank balance does not go into the red, so he will need to facilitate regular sales of our best players.
With regard to a British coach, Webber has his coaching “badges”, and knows the Championship. I’m sure he has very regular conversations with Farke and his assistants.
Excellent point regarding Webber’s coaching badges and experience. Irvine was never the right fit for the club.
I’ve read so often that Alan Irvine elevated Maddison to the team that I thought I’d check my recollection. And you know what – Irvine never actually started him. A couple of short sub appearances, that’s all. It was only Farke who played him from the start, in preseason then the league.
A nice speculative article with some good points – but two underplayed issues, I think. First, the new structure is more radical than Will seems to acknowledge. The Sporting Director/Head Coach mechanism requires a quite different way of working and thinking from the traditional English set-up. Would Irvine have fitted into that completely unfamiliar new way?
Second, Irvine had Alex Neil’s squad to work with. True, he made them perform a bit closer to their potential – but that squad was never going to survive the financial squeeze of the summer. Whoever came in would have to find a Trybull, a Zimmermann, a Stiepermann.
Of course, we’ll never know. But it wouldn’t have been quite as simple as one might think.
Yes, you are correct Stewart, it was Pritchard Irvine elevated to starting, since Neil hadn’t even done that. Maddison had just a couple of sub appearances right at the end of the season I think.
You are correct in your second point too. Webber wanted someone who would also know something about German and other European players and could support the scouting for cheaper player options. Zimmermann obviously came directly because of Farke, and his knowledge may have helped with the others, at least in terms of evaluating them.
As to the question of whether Farke can achieve more than Irvine potentially could have done, I’ll leave that to next season to answer. When Irvine left here he said he wanted a full time gig, which he never did get, although he is at least back in the Premier League with David Moyes at West Ham.
In addition, there is another factor about Farke. He was brought in to help improve City’s training methods which were deemed to be not up to scratch with Alex Neil, with players tiring at the end of games. I’m not sure that Irvine would have changed that very much.
Stewart – I was just reading an article a few minutes ago that had Pritchard not been injured at Cambridge, then Maddison may not have been ‘thrown in at the deep end’ and so claim NCFC ‘Player of the Month’ for the last 4 months and MUST be well on his way to POTS (assuming he’s still here come May. Of course he’s destined for a PL club, but I’m sure when AN signed him, he could not have foreseen that.
Hard to believe that AN also signed Naismith ……..
Perhaps, but Farke was already playing Maddison in pre-season before Pritch’s injury
My recollection of Irvine’s time in charge was that NCFC had nothing to play for at the time. We were already a long way off the pace. Whatever happened then can be discounted. A bit like playing well when you are 0-3 down.