It’s a year to the day since Dean Smith and Craig Shakespeare rocked up at Carrow Road. The Club decided to commemorate the anniversary with a tweet of a beaming, yellow-and-green-scarf-adorned Deano standing in the tunnel. If you can stomach it, it’s at the foot of this piece.
You don’t need me to expand on how it was received.
Given the situation in which the Club finds itself and the general level of angst, it takes a special type of chutzpah to believe a tweet of that ilk is going to receive anything other than industrial levels of mockery.
If not chutzpah, then similar levels of delusion and ignorance are required to read the room quite so badly. A third option – that the Club is sticking two fingers up to the fans – would once have been beyond the realms of possibility. Now I’m not so sure.
Whatever the driver, all it really did was remind everyone what a miserable year it’s been, but just in case we weren’t 100 percent aware, the Pink Un summarised it succinctly:
It needs little commentary.
While a loss percentage of more than 50 percent may be just about acceptable if all of that time had been spent in the Premier League, the fact that 21 of those games have been in the second tier gives it an altogether different slant.
To add further perspective, in those 48 games, 45 goals have been scored and 81 conceded. And armed with what is widely considered to be one of the stronger squads in the second tier, this season we have a less-than-50-percent win record.
But calling for change, as many of us have, appears futile. There appears little, if any, appetite for it from those who goose-step the Carrow Road corridors of power. All they see is a team still in touch with the automatic promotion places, regardless of the wider context of under-performances and two wins in ten.
It is worth pointing out again that Dean Smith appears to be a genuinely decent bloke who in another setting may still prove himself to be a decent football coach. None of this is personal. But it just feels and has always felt, that he and Norwich City Football Club are not a good match.
The Attanasios, whose view on the matter could see it raised at the top table, have, it seems, had the ‘Dean Smith is a quality coach’ mantra drummed into them. They’ve also said that, for now, they won’t involve themselves in footballing matters.
So, any thirst for change would have to come from the quartet of power – Delia, Michael, Stuart, and Zoe – and I suspect we all know the answer to that one.
On the part of Webber, using the four-week World Cup window to bring in a new coaching team would also be an admission of an error of judgement, and so I can’t see it even being a thing.
I believe that the Dean Smith line, of the Club using the enforced break as a reset and one from which they’ll “come back stronger”, is one shared by the decision-makers.
And so on we plod, with them hoping the passage of time between the Middlesbrough horror and the arrival of Blackburn Rovers to Carrow Road – just eight days before Christmas – will be more than ample to quell the unrest from the needy, moany, and impatient locals.
Of course, the problems wouldn’t suddenly end with the sacking of Dean Smith and the appointment of a new progressive, forward-thinking replacement. Said replacement would still be walking into a club that’s declared war on the local newspaper, which views dissenters as uninformed troublemakers, and which has garnered an unhealthy reputation for its internal working practices.
None of that will be readily resolved by a new face in the dugout, and in the case of the impasse with the local media, that assumes that both parties want to find a resolution in the first place.
For one party though, this situation appears absolutely fine and worthy recompense for perceived disloyalty on the part of the other.
I fear it’s going to take something far more cataclysmic than a four-week footballing armistice to broker any kind of peace.
All in all, it’s a club that, from the outside looking in, appears rotten.
From what’s happening on the green stuff through to its upper echelons – where the big decisions are made – and via the suits who implement those decisions, there is a growing feeling of us and them. And between us and them is an ever-widening chasm.
I’ve tried to avoid using ‘disconnect’ but there really is no other way of putting it. It’s there at every turn.
The only faint glimmer of hope is offered by our new friends from the US who, so far, appear blissfully untainted by the toxicity that has grown and grown over the last 18 months. Perhaps they remain unaware.
In the Attanasios’ chat with the lads from Talk Norwich City, they, for now, appear focussed on improving the mechanics where they feel they can help, but clearly have a loose plan in place to increase their involvement in our club. That, perhaps, offers a green shoot to which we should all cling.
But, in the here and now, all I have is… Happy Anniversary, Dean!
Whoopee.
I love the tweets underneath had me in stitches surely they will look at that and see they are a laughing stock are they really being serious ?!! That is a 27% win ratio say no more .
I remember when the fans last season challenged Stuart Webber and I remember his attitude back and that seems to be playing out the same here his general bullish attitude that he and hence the club are above the media and the fans .
They must be patting each other on the backs at how good they are and what little we all know .
Do they want a fan base ?
Hi Gary
Dean Smith record is in all city games a 28% win rate.
He also has a low win rate overall in his management career of 39.4%
I really can’t see an way he can improve those stats unless we don’t lose another game this season.
I thinks as fans you have to vote with your feet nowadays just don’t turn up the more who do that the quicker the penny will drop .
And the same with local press just don’t turn up .
Well said Gary
If only Stuart Webber could see the MFW home page right now.
Five articles by five different writers with the same theme running through all of them. Each one indicating just how disenfranchised the writer feels. Webber could get the point by looking at the headlines alone.
After reading the articles he might care to read the excellent comments from our readers – over 100 in just 60 hours, all agreeing on just how rancid our beloved Club has become.
Have a dip in the MFW lake Mr Webber. The water’s lovely.
It really is difficult to comprehend what is happening to this club, not too long ago I went to possibly the finest match ever at Carrow road beating the mighty Manchester City. How proud we were. Flags waved, the stands rocking. All was well with our club. Okay it couldn’t last and it didn’t but Daniel and Stuart took us on one hell of a journey. Fast forward to today, what a miserable excuse for a united club we have become. Delia you own the club if you don’t love it sell it to the Attanasios pronto. Webber grow up, kiss and make up with the media. The only way this is going is mass protests and slumping attendances.. There is no joy in going to matches at Carrow Road now.
The replies to that tweet from the Club have been the most entertaining thing I’ve seen from NCFC this season.
After Saturday’s game Smith was discussing his revolutionary new theory about “being a good team-mate” How stupid does he think the players are? In reality it’s a pathetic attempt at passing the buck. Perhaps Webber should explain to Smith about “being a good manager” An interesting statistic is that now 100 per cent of Norwich fans want him gone.
99 percent, some fans will always defend the club .
You mean the owners.
Gosh, an anniversary to savour. A year of unalloyed joy.
Agree with all your points, Gary.
I’ve never disliked Deano as a bloke but it never felt ‘right’, even from Day 1.
He’s got a helluva job turning around his potential NCFC legacy.
Happy Anniversary………most definitely not!!
Sadly by deciding to put out this tweet our club just seems to go from one car crash to the next, it was obvious from attending the AGM last Thursday who’s actually pulling the strings at CR and I don’t believe it’s the majority shareholders. Delia and Michael appear to be undertaking a fair impression of Emperor Nero at this present time and one wonders just how much of their Rome will be left when they finally decide to metaphorically ‘crack some heads’ if they ever do.
Saturday’s game turned into a disaster after a really promising first thirty minutes, we all knew the importance of the game going into the World Cup break but the players decided to knock off early and Smith just doesn’t have it in him to alter that scenario.
I should have realised how the afternoon would pan out when the bugler played The Last Post all the way through what should have been a minutes silence in respect of the fallen. It should have been played to signal the end of the silence as was announced but true to form our club even managed to bugger that up as well.
What a shambles and a joke we are, but nobody’s laughing.
Wrote this in an email on 27 July 2019:-
“At the present time Stuart Webber is untouchable but his coup (never forget his wife is disguised as Ward, a conflict of interest if ever there was one) leaves him beyond criticism even if things turn sour – no CEO or Chairman (but of course, that’s really Webber; he is not simply, ‘The Sporting Director’); as for the Board what is their power of scrutiny?”
Since July 2019, nothing has changed regarding the ‘power structure’ at Carrow Road. Delia and Michael have for whatever reason (age? fading interest in the politics of a football club?) allowed the Club to be run by two people who have sacked or released key staff (Ferrari and Gifford at the time prompted my July 2019 email)
In the meantime one Webber has become two, so to speak, and by doing so the Webbers have increased their significant influence, creating an executive board of six of which they are two members and additionally, achieving a placement on the board of directors for Zoe, now so empowered she feels able to use her married name (see NCFC annual report).
She glowingly wrote in the recent NCFC annual report (page 5) of her delight “that our Sporting Director Stuart Webber agreed a new contract. Stuart fully understands and appreciates our model and is central to driving our transfer strategy and our financial stability.”
These remarks, if you give consideration to the context in which they were made and her relationship to the Sporting Director, are quite funny. But not, you’ll note, very.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – the biggest problem for those of us that desperately want change at Norwich are the fans themselves – the ‘happy clappers’, the passive fans who put up with this sh1t from the club both on the field and off. Another club wouldn’t put up with this disconnect from those in power towards the fans – they would demonstrate en-mass before every home game outside the building and then go home. In other words, vote with your feet, that’s the only way to get through to this mob.
It’s illegal now to demonstrate on field so do so outside, and those who do go into the stadium do so with placards or keep up continuous booing from the games start. That way the main stream media will take over from our local outlets and widespread coverage might start to get to this arrogant mob. It worked to get rid of Chase and it will get rid of the cook and her cohorts.
I’ve also voiced my concerns over Attanasio involvement at the Carra. If you research him, as I’ve done, you’ll find the Brewers’ fans are continually complaining of the lack of investment from him and are none too happy to see his investment plans with Norwich. He is from the same mould as the cook, nothing at Norwich will change. He’s a Delia clone it’ll be the “same old, same old”, so don’t pin your hopes on this bloke, although I think he’ll do a better job than our present mob. But whilst he may be wealthy by most of our standards he’s not mega rich, and he’s got short arms and deep pockets.
I should have added had he ( Attanasio ) had differing views than that of the cook he wouldn’t have been entertained as an investor