HOW LONG DO WE GIVE HIM ?

I have this picture framed in my bedroom

 

My interactions with Norwich city this season haven't been great , went to the first home game against Wigan and sensed discontent, gave my daughter a fiver to buy a pie at half time and she was told that they're cashless now .

Absurd .

Bought a pre season Canary TV pass to watch the Scottish games, stream kept stopping and asking me to log in about 20 times .

Missed most of both games, emailed customer services to complain and expected a free pass , told by a Karen that it's my WiFi even though the commentary team kept bringing it up that they're having technical difficulties.

Not given them a penny since.

 

Opinion: Dean Smith's complaints against Norwich City fans are valid

https://www.edp24.co.uk/sport/23208507.opinion-dean-smiths-complaints-norwich-city-fans-valid/

 

Codswallop!

 

I love this paragraph: "There seems to be a significant element of hypocrisy among the current City fanbase – symptomatic of football supporters more broadly – whereby they feel entitled to throw as much abuse as they want at managers and players but, when those in question hit back, throw their toys out of the pram and act as though they have committed a crime against humanity."

Mmm. Who does this remind you of? Yes, our very own uber-genius Stuart Webber, who loves to dish it out but sulks and preens and takes his ball away when someone does the same to him.

I agree there's 'a significant element of hypocrisy' but I don't think it's among the fanbase.

 

It feels like the club have forgotten what being a fan is actually like. It's taken for granted that we should want to pay through the nose each week for the privilege of coming to Carrow Road and making a good atmosphere. We're not doing our job right if we do anything else. The finance guy seemed to say as much in the October/November "The insight" video. The Carrow Road atmosphere this season hasn't been ideal, but the club have done very little on or off the pitch to improve it.

The 2017 Webber mantra of "ignore the noise" never meant "ignore the thoughts everyone outside of the board room". But that's what it's seemingly become.


Until his comments of the last week, I could feel somewhat sorry for Smith, because the club appear to have stopped doing lots of things that bought Farke support and patience when things were tough. In his first season, the club made a big effort at all levels to educate the fans on what Farke was trying to achieve on the pitch, and the financial realities he faced in doing it. It helped that it was attractive football, and billed as the "Norwich way" from now on, which would undergo evolution not revolution when a new head coach came in. Later in his tenure, Farke was helped by the club's work with supporter groups to boost the Carrow Road atmosphere.


Last season, it felt like Farke had been told his football needed to evolve to stay up. Unfortunately, the combination of poor/late signings, a tough schedule and uncertainty in how best to meet his new brief cost Farke his job. That change to the clubs footballing philosophy felt subtle in the summer, but the appointment of Smith makes it clear with hindsight that the desired change was much more significant. By November the "Norwich way" had been scrapped, replaced with a newfound desire for "pragmatic football" which Smith espoused, but this wasn't really explained well by the club.


Nevertheless, the fans clearly recognised Smith was trying to do something different with an unsuitable squad, and gave him time to find a winning formula. I don't think there was another set of fans in the Premier League last season who would have shown anything like the patience Norwich fans did, at any other club there's no way he lasted beyond March. 12 months on from his appointment, and with a significant squad overhaul, he seems nowhere near finding a functional playing style. Questions have been asked all season, papered over by a positive run of results (which even at the time had people questioning whether the performances earned the results).


What we're trying to achieve on the pitch with Smith-ball hasn't been communicated half as well by the club as Farkeball was. So the fans don't know the aims, and the constantly changing formations gives the impression that Smith doesn't know what Smithball is either (Transfermarkt has 7 formations in 23 games). The only article I saw in the summer trying to explain Smith's gameplan was in The Athletic, which suggested the plan was a 4-3-3 with wingers, and two dynamic "8s" in the middle of the pitch with a holding mid. The 8s arrived in Sara and Nunez, but we then loaned out every winger in the squad (Rashica, Tzolis, Placheta, Rowe injured) except Onel, and seem to abandon this plan by the end of October - we haven't played 4-3-3 since.


And even through all this period excuses were made for Smith. Injuries to key players (Sara, Hayden then Gibbs, and all the LBs), a period where we were denied a stonewall penalty seemingly every game, etc. But there's been no discernible improvement even after a month of training with those players all fit. It's not surprising the fans got frustrated.


Smith then detonated any remaining goodwill with his comments about a "narrative" after the Blackburn game, and pathetic attempts to justify their inability to progress the ball with cherry-picked stats, whilst framing the booing in a way that ironically drives a narrative he's creating. Doubling down on those comments pre-Luton is breathtakingly stupid and unhelpful. I have no idea how he thinks that helps him whatsoever.


It's like the club have been deliberately stacking firewood for the last few months. The media blackout, the lack of clarity around Attanasio's role, poor engagement with fan groups, the dreadful "Insight" video, Webber's Telegraph interview, Webber's "90% of me is enough" comments, etc. It probably goes back BK8-gate when things started going astray. But rather than fix Smith's "Comms error" last week and heal divides, they've poured petrol all over the firewood and lit a bonfire.


Short of a 4-0 win Vs Luton, followed up by a superb home performance, the atmosphere at the Reading game is going to be the most toxic since the Burnley game in 2004(ish) which got Worthington got sacked. And that's entirely the fault of Smith and the club - not the fans.

 

^^ Top bloody post, DH ^^
Worthy of a guest appearance on My Football Writer, for sure.

 

Excellent ! Some points very well made without the need to employ stats or to reference quotes from so called experts. . One poster in particular, could learn a thing or two

 

Ooh! Now, I wonder who that could be?

 

Yes, an excellent post DH. Well thought through and developed with care, it reveals clearly how we have come to be where we are. The 'ignore the noises outside the boardroom' is particularly apt as the boardroom evolves into a bunker. Smith enters it and emerges again to shift fan noises into a 'narrative', which is, in fact, something he himself has created. The disconnect grows with each passing day and will, eventually, engulf him and descend the club into a deeper chaos.

 

It's really depressing, isn't it? There is no sign of the end of this tunnel. No sign whatsoever.

 

Stacking firewood? You mean hauling "li'l old Naaridge" kicking and screaming into the modern football world? The process has been ongoing for far longer than "the last few months". People need to get used to it; Attanasio didn't get where he is without concealing an iron fist in that velvet glove.

 

No, I don't. Leave the goalposts where I put them please.

Every one of the examples I listed is to do with the way the club communicates with fans, rather than a comment on the larger (generally good), progressive work going on at the club.

It is not modernising the club to allow the manager to drive a wedge between himself and the fans, in a way that just serves to further worsen relationships and the Carrow Road atmosphere. Nothing positive has come from it, and the fact it's been allowed to play out over 3 matches now just gives the impression the board agree with it.

It is not modernising to have an executive state that there's no disconnect because fans keep paying for seats and turning up, fuelling a feeling that fans are only appreciated for their financial contributions to the club. It's sapped fan goodwill which later could have been used to support the manager.

It is not modernising to do an interview with a national newspaper, resulting in the provocative headline "it's not my job to appease Norwich fans", with any nuance locked behind a paywall. If it's an attempt to expand your fanbase through exposure in a national newspaper, then a) perhaps after a soul-destroying relegation isn't the best time to do it, and b) if it costs you so much editorial oversight that the resulting article winds up your existing fanbase, then perhaps you've misjudged the benefits to the club.*

On a PR front, it's own goal after own goal, serving no aim in modernising the club.

*Of course, if the aim was purely to promote an individual, perhaps it still achieved it's aims...

 

How long do we give him? I gather that Webber is quite keen on infinity.

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/breaking-norwich-city-sack-dean-28822615.amp

He's gone, it's official

 

https://www.pinkun.com/news/23214788.norwich-city-reports-suggest-dean-smith-sacked/

 

From the EDP the current runners and riders:

SkyBet leading odds: Scott Parker 11/4, Sean Dyche, Russell Martin 4/1, Mark Robins 6/1, Chris Wilder, Ralph Hassenhuttl 7/1, Kjetil Knutsen 12/1, Ryan Lowe 16/1, Anthony Barry, Steven Gerrard 18/1

https://www.edp24.co.uk/sport/23215196.dyche-parker-among-bookies-favourites-land-norwich-city-job/

 

Might we go German again or at least European?

 

I thought infinity was longer than that Gozo.