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As much as certain people don’t want to believe it, Emi and Skipp were the beating heart of this team last Championship season. We haven’t replaced Emi with a playmaker in the same ilk, and we don’t have a CDM that can anticipate and protect like Skipp. We’ve ripped the supply of goals from Pukki so he feeds on scraps, Sargent is absolutely useless and not of the required standard, Rashica looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, and the midfield is far too soft and easy to overrun. If Smith hadn’t figured all of that out from last season then frankly, I don’t see how we’re going to compete at all.

When Farke was doing his magic it felt like a new era. Attacking attractive football, the sense of a set style of play. We were told the DoF ensured that losing a manager would not lead to the end of the system allowing for smooth transition. What happened to all that? We sack the progressive European manager, hire an old school English manager in desperation and his style is totally at odds with what we were building. Now - just a few months later - and we look very ordinary indeed. players deemed not good enough (Sinani, Onel) 18 months ago return and look far better than the hollowed out players who got us sunk. Our stars who were heading for huge moves are suddenly unwanted and losing value. Our main striker is grabbing at crumbs and doesn’t suit the style being played, he is tired after a long season but no help was purchased to support him. It’s amazing how far we seem to have slid in a year. Fingers crossed this was a blip and the new faces bed in quick- because on this performance we will end up closed to L1 than the Prem

On a more positive note, I thought Josh Sargent put in a good shift; the boy just oozes quality. He's like a young (but not quite as gifted) Andy Hughes. OTBC

The point ive been making for some time. The old road was the correct one, it made us distinctive. This road just leads us back to being like everyone else. An important facet of our identity has been thrown away in a moment of panic.

What it looked like to me was an imitation of Farke's 4-2-3-1 by a coaching team who really don't understand the fundamental principles of how it's supposed to work. Sacking Farke is looking worse with each passing week.

Nothing up with Pukki. It's the cretin playing a formation that nullifies one of the most prolific strikers this league has ever seen. Like taking a Formula 1 car to race on an off road circuit.

It was a pretty rude awakening to the Championship. Dirty tactics, poor officiating and if you aren’t switched on and let a team get in front with a soft goal they’ll park the bus and good luck breaking them down. Cardiff looked every bit a standard Championship team and we didn’t have the ability to either match them at their level or outplay them. That’s why we lost.

Because we have no creativity. It’s the same problem from last season. You can’t simply stick Pukki up front and expect goals to happen, he needs supply off the shoulder and the midfield need to progress the ball forwards quickly and with intent. Rashica and Sargent did absolutely nothing today. I’d replace them both next game, no question.

It's really ridiculous in this day and age that people have to scrabble around trying to find a stream to watch a football match by all sorts of complicated digital acrobatics. Just give us a reliable and decent feed that we can all subscribe to simply for a reasonable fee and people could just enjoy their football rather than struggle all the time.

How good is it not to see wee Billy on the team sheet 🤣

Very excited/nervous today. As a Norfolkboy exiled in the principality I’m praying today goes to plan. y’army

He had his best ever season for goals and assists and was arguably the most in form English midfielder in the last few months, leading many England fans to criticise Southgate for including Grealish but not Maddison in his last two squads.

I'm still of the opinion that Dean Smith lost the dressing room in December. Perhaps not in the traditional sense where it's obvious the players have downed tools and aren't fighting for the manager, but the players sure as hell aren't playing for the manager. And vice versa the manager isn't playing vicariously thru the players. And what I mean by that is that Dean Smith's influence doesn't seem to be evident in any player on that pitch. You could sense under Farke it was. Each individual player seemed to improve and be playing at 100% of their ability and beyond. As if they had been 'coached' to perform at a higher level. They all had a clear plan it seemed and they all excelled in their individual positions and jobs. And as a team it showed. Aarons, Hernandez, Emi, Stiepermann, Vrancic etc. All improved greatly under Farke and reached the absolute peak of their footballing powers. Under Smith every player in the squad had gone backwards. Look at Rashica today. Awful. No progression of players. Zero tactics on how to manufacture goalscoring opportunities. No obvious game plan on how we are going to set about beating the opposition on front of us. There is simply no 'Deano Effect' on this team. The players seem to be just playing football because it's their job as professional footballers, and they know how to play football. Theres no individual or collective influence on how we play to a man or as a team on the whole, that is tangibly and recognisably attributable to Dean Smith. The complete opposite was the case under Daniel Farke. The whole club was dripping wet from head to toe in Farkes methods for 4 years.

Calm down, no need for insults. Take a breath.

And just like in all our relegation season you will be there to assure us everything is just fine - when it plainly isn’t

Alternatively it succinctly sums up the rage, powerlessness and frustration many of us feel at the state of the country and the state of the government who are *still* in power despite delivering the sum of f all in the last twelve years, other than decimated public services and economic self-harm. ☹️

They've all been asked to chip in for Vardy's wife's court case bill and thought "F*uck that I'm off!"

You always do this, Hogesar, and it's not really fair, and, more importantly, not relevant. OK, so maybe DCB did criticise Farke two years ago. What has that got to do with whether Dean Smith is up to the job now? He may be, he may not be, but what any of us thought about Farke in his first season or two seasons ago is neither here nor there.

When we lost Farke we lost our identity. I thought the sporting director idea was to provide consistency - we changed coach and a whole way of playing. I can’t see Smith stopping long.

Sacrificed at the altar of proving the £30m wasn’t ‘pissed up the wall’. Rashica and Sargent were rightly substituted today for looking ineffectual in the second tier. Farke wasn’t to blame for our lack of corporate finance and corollary lack of competitiveness at the top level. Parma

Well that created some disturbing imagery for me... (apologies to Lakey who I hope takes the joke in the harmless manner it is intended)

A very low rent game. Very unclear what patterns we were trying to replicate to create passa-gol opportunities. If you have Pukki, you must set up the team to provide him with the kind of ball he requires. We very rarely even tried it. Odd. Taking off c£20m in Rashica and Sargent a sad indictment. And I do not say it was wrong. Cantwell looked the most likely, though he has come in from the cold of course. Hernandez flatters to deceive, little end product. Hugill game, though clumsy. But we knew all that already. As Farke might have said ‘I cannot see the coach’s fingerprint’ Parma

Tell me why Smith deserves more than 11 games? It's all Farke got to bed in new signings, most of whom were crocked or not match fit. After pissing the league the season before and having laid out a philosophy through the club from top to bottom and bringing on players who we sold for millions. If he only gets 11 games grace, why should Smith get more?

Well, that was the great confidence builder that we all needed. Bravo City, bravo.

Not going to score even if we had 20 mins of injury time. Creativity is so so poor

Not sure why anyone is surprised here. Webber has been making our starting 11 weaker season by season, we are now reliant on returning loanees to provide something as our signings from last season don't look like footballers. 1 shot on target all game, playing 10 men and its just like Newcastle all over again. Smith's style of football makes Hughton's style seem orgasmic. Pukki now injured, Hanley sent off so one fit senior CB left in our squad. Us as fans need to do something as our club is getting killed in front of our eyes and we seem happy just to watch it happen. Mid table mediocrity here we come.

Everyone panic.

If Rashica and Sargent aren’t up to this level then get them off

I, for one, am really enjoying the over hit long balls. A refreshing change from all that Farkeball nonsense

Trouble is, it produces a majority that represents a minority of votes - in my lifetime there have been a number of governments, both Tory and Labour, who recorded less than a 40% vote share - in 2005 Labour won with 35.6% and still got a 66 seat majority!! How can that possibly be right or democratic? I also think you are quite wrong to assume coalitions are impotent, a lot (a majority I think) of European countries are run by coalitions and whilst it is fair to say there are some problems - the Belgians are famously slow to actually put together a working coalition after an election, Italian coalitions seem pretty unstable (though I think that is more a reflection of the Italians themselves than the nature of their governance, they really love regular elections 😁) . But if you look around Europe, and especially northern Europe, most coalitions seem to work pretty well and certainly better than governments in the UK. The other point I think is that the coalitions tend to be long term, and therefore governments tend to plan and govern for the longer term - something that has always been lacking in UK governments who have never (Labour post war government excepted) planned or acted for the long or even mid term, and since Johnson came to power the future doesn't seemed to have existed at all beyond tomorrow's headlines in the Fail and Torygraph.

F*** Liz Truss and f*** the Tories. Scum the lot of them. End of thread.

He may not be some fancy tricky dribbler who wow's you when he's on the ball but you know what? He's a top bloke, he clearly loves us, the club and fans, and he very much loves just being able to play football. There's also the fact that he is quite frankly sort of an Adama Traore style player in which he is quite the strong battering ram. He's not gong to do fancy spins and fake passes to get past defenders- But he will just batter his way past them with ease and quite often when he's one on one he sends the player he's against to the floor with his strength and determination. He really does bring something unique to our cub and I hope we hold onto him for as long as we can. Is he going to be a nailed on stater? No, of course not. But is he a fantastic choice to have to bring on against tired legs in the 70th minute? Yes.

The weird thing is he hasn't seemed to listen to a word of the club's own very clear explanation of its "self-funding strategy". When Alex Neil's team were relegated from the PL the club was in serious debt and in real danger of falling into administration. Ed Balls gave an excellent long interview with Radio Norfolk in which he announced that a top to bottom review of every aspect of the NCFC business structure would take place before a new managerial team would be appointed. The self-funding model was duly announced and the key appointments of Webber and Farke secured. The subsequent success of that model speaks for itself (no debt and two promotions). A key concept of that model is the notion of becoming a "top 26 club". It is both aspirational and, crucially, the only realistic plan for the club to achieve established PL status. Until a beneficent billionaire turns up ready to splash 2-3 hundred million on players (not something the club could possibly plan for) the club's only plausible strategy for generating the cash required is two-fold; to achieve promotion, and to develop young talent capable of demanding high transfer fees. The "top 26" aspiration was very specifically adopted precisely because the club was realistic and honest in its recognition that a single promotion would still leave the club short of the sort of funds needed to compete with PL clubs funded by billionaires and massive debts. Yo-yoing between the PL and Championship is built into the plan not as a desirable outcome, but as a near inevitable part of a process of building up the financial resources required for achieving established PL status. We were able to spend an enormous amount of money last time we went up (by our own benchmark) precisely because of the self-funding model. No one should conflate the fact of that record spending with the subsequent reality that the players bought didn't prove capable of keeping us up. The idea that we should abandon players proven to be Championship winners and promote less capable academy players to the first team in their place, spending years "consolidating" in the Championship in the hope that those players develop into PL superstars, is frankly insane. Firstly, there are no grounds at all for believing such a team could be formed; we have already seen that a single academy only very rarely produces PL quality players (witness the top six with their massive academies). Secondly, such a team would by definition contain no players with any PL experience, thus would be far worse off in that respect than our current squad. Perhaps most importantly of all, spending years in the Championship would result in a massive loss of funds. Any young talent capable of competing in the PL that we did develop would have to be sold off to keep the club solvent. Thus the idea that we could develop a young squad over several years capable of promotion and consolidating itself in the PL is nothing more than pure fantasy.

It's widely touted that farkeball doesn't work in the Premier League, at least not without high quality players. I'm increasingly inclined to agree; to a point... The implication is that Farke wasn't good enough a manager for the top flight. The assumption being that the squad was of sufficient quality but the tactics and coaching needed to be improved. The expectations were set by the quality shown in winning the Championship twice in three years. Surely the best players in the Championship would be able to compete at the next level? Here's a thought: what if they weren't the best players in the Championship? What if they were a group of misfits, cast-offs and youth players operating well above their natural level due to the exceptional coaching and tactics of a once in a lifetime manager? Let's put things into perspective. It took a year of hard graft to drill the system into the players. Then everything clicked into place in the second season where, after a slow start, they put together an incredible run to the highest points total in the club's history. No wonder Premier League survival seemed impossible. We were effectively trying to survive with a mid table Championship squad. Never mind relegation though, we simply smashed the Championship again with even more points. The idea that we could sell our best player and sign a few fresh faces, change the system and suddenly compete in the Premier League is looking increasingly naive. Farke was given an impossible task and sacked based upon the flawed assumption that the squad was better than it really was. I'm of the belief that no manager could have kept that team up. There simply wasn't enough quality. In Dean Smith we have a capable if unspectacular manager who will likely get the team operating at its natural level. Unfortunately that probably means mid table in the Championship. Farkeball couldn't keep a mid table Championship team up in the Premier League. Assuming that Farke was the problem has seen us arrogantly dispatch the best Norwich City manager I've known. Now we're going to find out just what we've lost.

...sorry, it's nothing football. I've never posted a knee-jerk/pant wetting post but this is dire football needs to be said, and we all know it. If you don't agree then let me know your favourite Dean Smith game? Tough eh? At least Hughton had some kind of structure. I have no idea how to describe his style and systems. Lets hope Sara and Hayden come good.

Theoklitos and the Wolf. (I think I have their second album: absolute prog-rock shi ite.)

Gsus Yobocop. Now that's harsh. That's akin to accusing your child's primary school teacher of having a bit of the Jimmy Savile's about them. OTBC

And posters who said this is the best championship squad in this division!

Also it was supposedly running stats because of our lack of athleticism first time in the PL under Farke. They completely ignored the fact they are bad footballers.

Come back Normann, all is forgiven

Sargent only fell over once all game - result! If he can cut out falling over completely, he can upgrade to a goal post. OTBC

Let’s pretend lets pretend lets pretend we scored a goal

Why Rashica thinks he is too good for this league is beyond me. Is he even playing?

Ha. So you are predicting either they will win or we will win or a draw. Powerful stuff

Was fine. Weathered early pressure, have controlled the match from about 20 minute mark. They’ve not had any meaningful chances. They are getting loads of bodies behind the ball, fouling immediately if caught out. Not really surprised we haven’t had more chances.We look the better side. Set plays have been poor which is disappointing. Could go either way, can see them nicking a goal or us getting one or two and seeing it out. Or a bore draw.

Hardly, FPTP has always been dysfunctional IMO - certainly during my voting lifetime anyway (i.e. the last 50 years 🙁)

The right wing press (especially the Daily Mail) spend most of their time reporting 'outrage' and 'fury' from social media, your perception really should be taken with a big handful of salt.

This conversation surely supports the view that there should have been another confirmatory referendum once the actual details of the Brexit deal were established. The first referendum was an advisory (not binding) referendum so parliament certainly had both the power and good reason to seek the nation's approval for a deal which was very different from what had been promised by many on the leave side.

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