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I naively assumed that the club meant what they said when they decided to move in a different direction and for a while their actions appeared to confirm this e,g. There being no call to sack the manager after the first relegation from the Premier League. The impression i had was that we had moved away from the established idea of sacking managers in the hope of success and were intent on building for a future based on the type of football and style of play that Daniel Farke had instigated. My feelings were that this gave us a unique identity and despite the results being harder to come by in the top league, it was an identity that we would strive to maintain. In the long run and due to financial constraints this might only make us perennial yoyo club but personally speaking that would not be a bad thing. Sadly it seems that somebody in authority wasn't 100% committed to the idea and ditched the project. Now we find ourselves back with every other football club, hoping the next manager might hit the jackpot. Ive been a supporter for seventy years and i have seen good times and bad times but I've only ever seen one dream time. It won't come again.

So now we know quite a lot more. We’ve had time to chew over the interviews, we’ve had some signings, we know Webber is leaving, we fear Farke might end up at Leeds (please God no), that Webber may well end up there with him. As they look to the future. A future we rejected. We also have very clear signs about what the present is. Because we know what the present looks like, we can compare it to the recent - and not so recent - past and make some clear comparisons and reasonable judgments. Judgments are judgmental of course, though there is no need for hindsightism, revisionism, mis-direction or distraction any more. We can look it all in the mirror. Then we can fairly review what happened. The decisions that were made. Whether they were good or bad, right or wrong. We can also make pretty good assessments of what criteria they were made by. This - and I suspect my friend @Don J Demorr will concur - is the interesting, telling and indicative bit. Not were you right, but what was your rationale, your strategic sporting and financials drivers and motivations? That will also show us our likely future. In terms of the Webber interviews - and regardless of semi-true football-speak, fan PR, dead cat bounces or whataboutery, we can see the direction of travel, what has been corrected, what has been lacking, what has worked and what hasn’t. It is not unfair - particularly for £500k a year - to make an empirical assessment of the decisions made in real time, with the information that was known, to see what people in power were thinking, what they tried to achieve and why they did it. Then - as with football every single day of my life - we get judged on whether the results, the process, the value was good enough. Plenty of players released at 16 have a lot of skills. They are simply deemed flawed in some way. Not good enough overall. Not up to the standard required. ‘Abuse’ online, on bedsheets or in the stands to a Sporting Director is laughable compared to that pressure, trauma and consequence. And it happens at every club every day, up and down the land. Let me be absolutely clear: if that process is good enough for sometimes fragile 16 year olds who may have their lives irrevocably changed (and their future much worsened as they feel it) in an instant, via the summary judgments of others, all whilst being paid a few hundred quid, then we can certainly mirror that process for senior managers of the football club being paid £500k. In fact we must. let us start with our new - old - transfer policy and dealings. Recognitions of fundamental weaknesses and failings all i’m afraid. None of Duffy, Barnes and Stacey are good enough for the premier league, so they are Mr Right now signings. This is not the same as me saying that they are not what we need, rather how on earth - and more importantly why - have we fallen so far that we need to do it at all. To require such a dramatic Change of culture, to not have ‘hate to lose’ mentality, to compromise Farkeball for more nasty steel, more seen-it-before heads when things go against you, shows how structurally, mentally and operationally weak we had become. However - to repeat - the signings are a clear recognition of where we are now. I applaud that. Recognising who and what we are, what our structural parameters are, what our financial restrictions are, is long overdue and fundamental on every level. But is that what we did , who we were, what we recognised upon 2nd promotion when we had our 2nd spectacular ‘pissed up the wall’ window? Who’s job was it to hold that tiller? Who monitored the ship’s direction? Who questioned? Who believed blindly and why? That’s ok for fans, it’s feeble for non-Execs or seniors. What does @Don J Demorr think this shows about our self-awareness? Might he identify a weak nexus point? Ok. But then is it manager or head coaches? Is it ‘defensive errors’?. Every goal against is a defensive error somewhere if you look hard enough or far enough back, it’s true and not really true. Upon first premier promotion ‘19 we employed a cute - though often flawed - strategy of multiple 1st team loans. Quite a fair gamble with limited finances. Fine. Then we progressed to ‘21 promotion and upgraded to investment purchases. This was the Shakespearean fulcrum moment. The once-in-football generation springboard opportunity. Money to spend, an open market, good brand positivity, a poor man’s Borussia Dortmund (rather than a poor man’s Crewe Alexandra) For £10m each, young ambitious players, high playing and financial growth potential, this should not be so difficult. It is fishing aggressively in a good pond. You can find winners there. In fact you must. It’s a huge amount of money for a Tzolis or a Sargent. However the process looked flaky from the outset. Buying from weak leagues should already be ringing alarm bells. The Championship is very different to the Premier, though it is quite arguably a top 5 European league. So - if you are buying from Greece say- you are paying £10m for a young League 1 standout!!!!??? Wow, that’s a big leap of faith. A £10m American striker - who were going through a period of terrible striker paucity hence his early caps - who had never had a natural goalscoring record? An awkward mover and unclean striker of the ball? One who didn’t make natural striker movements even? And so it proved. We got our once-in-a-generation pot of money and opportunity - when we were hot and Guardiola was watching us - to get some players in who were too good for us, but wanted attention, to move on and up, to shine at the top level….and we spent £20 million on players who weren’t ready or likely to be ready for a period? Odd. What else was revealed from the interviews? We sacked Farke for not achieving top level success. Explaining the sacking on the Training Ground Guru podcast earlier this year, Webber said: “We sacked Daniel, who had been amazing for this club on every level. “But ultimately, in the Premier League, we won six games out of 50 with him, and made the decision to go with Dean (Smith), because he’d been more successful than Daniel in the Premier League.” Though during the interviews - when in self-defense mode - he also stated that criticism was totally unfair because ‘ 2 of the 7 major trophies in the history of the club happened in last 2 years..’ Wow. Even by football’s two-faced standards that is playing both hands. What we DO know absolutely and conclusively is that sacking Farke hasn’t worked. It wasn’t the coach. It was the money. The structural limitations of the club itsef. It wasn’t even tactical approach, being too open or attacking or too Manchester City lite. The mercenary journeyman Smith was organized, Defensively-minded, he had contacts, made some signings. We threw the baby out with the bathwater and none of what came next added up to a hill of beans. As we said in the opening post on this thread. Ahead of time. So now we have neither top level success, nor appreciating investment purchases. We have no coherent sporting philosophy in evidence, our signings and spending is moving diametrically away from youth pathways into the first team and attracting up-and-coming talent that way. We are not good to watch. We don’t win. We don’t win at home. We don’t inspire. We are not even Prem lite. Though we will be soon. Rashica had been looked at for years by most Prem clubs , that was not a secret. He was Rejected repeatedly by all. Did they ‘miss something’ or were they just right? We ‘did different’ indeed. We ignored the lack of noise. In our club context these are Incredibly high investments with very poor returns. Loading money and expectation on 19 year old who had never left Greece? There is your risk. That is what has happened. Unexpected? So it comes back to the flaw at the heart of club - and fundamentally the entrance of Attanasio - in that we made compromised decisions based on financial limitations. We ended up Blaming individuals - and quite arguably one of the greatest playing individuals and one of the finest Head Coach’s our club has seen - for structural weaknesses and failings that were almost nothing to do with them. As per @Don J Demorr ‘s analysis. So then it does come back to: What are we? What do we want to be? How do we get there? What resources do we have? To answer these effectively you must start from truthful self-image. You don’t have to plaster it all over the EDP, though there are realpolitik discussions that must be had at non-Exec level. And adhered to in strategic decision-making and operations. Like when you spend once-in-generation £30m. Like selling your best player upon promotion. Like blaming a head coach for budget limitations or purchasing limitations. In sporting terms ‘Spreading goals around the team’ is easy to say, though rarely a reality on grass. Buendia plus Pukki was confirmed as special by neutral eye, fans and subsequently both of those players openly themselves. To repeat, it is not about selling Buendia per se, it is the horrific psychological timing and lack of understanding of the feelings in the dressing room. Ferguson spent a lifetime - and invented a myriad of cute tricks - to always have the temperature of the dressing room. Webber ignored that noise. And got it horribly wrong. There was of course no acknowledgment of any of that. There was lots of ‘let’s move on’, new tomorrow, new players, another game tomorrow, another season, another story. Ah! But we disdain that football PR **** don’t we? As with the famously-derided pissed up the wall window, there will be no moving on for years. There is only multiple years of mediocrity as payment. As my wise Father is fond of saying ‘you can make any decision you like, just be ready to pay the bill’. The cost of decisions is often only revealed after a period of time. Perhaps it’ll be 9 months from now (or somewhat less)…? In defense perhaps it was believed that Sargent, and Tzolis would be too good for champs and Rashica would be a no-lose gamble with easy money back. Ok. Maybe. Though Sargent looks mid-champs at best, Tzolis looks derailed and wanton. Rashica is holding out on us and creating a Dutch auction at Gala. I’ll bet you that eventual contract has enough contingent clauses to make your eyes water. To the press we’ll be able to (just about) present a reasonable figure, though the reality of cash banked will be pretty low. So any defence is really demonstrably proved as untrue on any reasonable level then. Yes we are judging. Just as 16 year first year professionals are judged. And not for £500k. So - and please remember we are taking about professional football - what actually happened? ‘Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth’ they say in boxing. Meaning you find out who you really are, how good you really are, how resilient your ideas are, your philosophies, your self-sustaining models when they come into contact with reality. There is no great wisdom in stating that within football Momentum is considered everything. So Sell Buendia at the post of promotion? Destroying your changing room morale? Raising eyebrows amongst all of your key assets and potential signings? Bursting your own hard-earned psychological equilibrium bubble? Yes players are super strong and super fragile at the same time. Why does a Mourinho - or even an Allardyce - Mis-direct traffic and the media attention to ‘protect his players’ then? The Premier is horrible. There is lots of losing. You go from oppressing, attacking, being the protagonist, to defending a lot, suffering lots of mistakes, running harder, for less. In many ways the 2019 approach was right in a corporate sense. It was much more realistic and coherent as a strategy. Much better fitted to resources, parameters and real world options. There is no law against trying to do that better. Perhaps just keepBuendia and throwing everything at a Skipp. Perhaps we did our best to do those things. Though the Sporting Director’s raison d’etre - much like the much-maligned Civil Service - is to keep the clumsy old, slow oil tanker pointing in pretty much the same direction despite the storms that reasonably often buffet it. Not Tearing up a club wide plan because you can’t achieve a club mission statement that you should never have written because you didn’t have the resources to do it. There were a few distraction-technique bones thrown to the fans. Some clumsy ‘we’re open for business’ sale signs above the door. Nunez to Brighton £20m. Sara in high demand. Omo ‘record bid’. There are many kinds of record bid. £5m paid over 4 years and £40m if you fly to the moon on a cazoo is technically a record bid. I note Alexis McCallister’s move to Liverpool was reported as both £35m and £55m. I think I’d like the second one more. It’s all about add ons and conditionals (and how realistic they are and when they are paid) Some of Webber’s Dead cat bounces were unnecessary and clumsy. The women’s football comment need not exist, does not have to be said, is embarrassing PR for the club and clumsily misrepresents the excellent development work done. Pathetic from a Sporting Director actually. As a Distraction technique perhaps he thought it was necessary. I’d prefer to look at his record. Some of you might look a little more closely at the fan-funded Colney developments, whose technical remit they fall under and how central the building development is to the Sporting Director role. Tell me Stuart, who did you spend the budget on again? There is of course a great deal of Managing upwards. Both protecting Delia and Michael’s lack of liquid input and simultaneously (until recently) eyeing up Attanasio’s. I get that. So now What is the model? What philosophical-operational-strategic continuity is the Sporting Director protecting? Is it just hard-working, don’t-want-to-lose winning football? Yes, I think I’ve heard that somewhere…I think others might have thought of that…it’s about as far from innovative-thinking ignore-the-noise as you can get isn’t it? Might we have a bit more identity than that please? Years ago we identified that nurturing Man City’s off casts and being a Crewe feeder to their world class treble winners might not be a bad model. There was no shame in it we said. Their reserve team would finish mid-table of the Premier we said. Guardiola watches us and loves us he said. Now that is Realpolitik strategic thinking for you. Too late now of course. That ship has sailed. As Don would no doubt say, choose the USP that you can be, not the ersatz version of what you can’t. Now I have seen the future. And it’s old. Farke to Leeds would be too much even for my cool, detached, empirical mind. That would prove we just got it wrong. You only know the cost of your choices when you come to pay the bill. We could get away with a bit of Smith mercenary denial for a bit. Some Wagnerian positive-mindset school-teachery summer jollity.The Eternal optimism of a new game, a new season, a new manager, a new superstar. But some things are David Gow and some things are Grant Holt.You get some things right and you get some things wrong. If you have lots of money and resources you can maybe get more things wrong and get away with it. Maybe even some big things. If you are inferior - sportingly, financially, operationally - you really can’t. And definitely not the big things. Support can be run on blind faith; running a Company - especially with limited resources - can not. So, farewell then Stuart Webber. Parma

I'll be honest it was really weird seeing grown men online, on here and other networks, constantly discussing Todd's hair and attire. Some of you were in your 60s and 70s and the lad was 19 or whatever. Creepy and weird.

I dont know if, with any other player, we had threads started on here about (they're all still viewable on this forum by the way) - Is Todd gay - grown men debating - Todd needs to cut his hair because he's attention seeking - Todd deserves stick if he's going to dress like that - An entire thread dedicated to a top less picture of Todf Unfortunately he's not making it up. Some of it got exceptionally personal on twitter / Instagram. Concerningly so. 50 year old blokes harassing him on Instagram if he uploaded a picture with his top off. I think he should have simply avoided social media but for his generation it's actually quite a sacrifice and I don't think it's the real answer.

He came in for unfair criticism. I doubt anyone was saying Hanley ought to shave better when he scored an own goal or Teemu should shave a stupid beard off when he missed a sitter. But Todd's criticism became personal and nasty and I would say that he never gave less than 100% on the pitch and we do not know the reasons for his sabbatical (so many made something up because their milkman's wifes hairdressers window cleaners gardner used to live only 40 miles from where he used to play as a child). I, for one, am delighted one of our own is doing well, even if it is for a different team.

Wherever young Max ends up I do personally wish him all the very best in his footballing career....He's been a model professional whilst here at NCFC. Max just got his head down and played football.....There's been no controversy, no hissy fits, no scandal, no wanting away or subliminal work to rule or injuries or saturation on social media....His nickname will never be 'chuckles' or 'smiler' and he on occasion and at times looks like he's lost a £50.00 note and found 20 pence....but, he's mature, committed and serious and has loyalty and integrity which in the modern game is a rarity.... Good luck Max...I'm grateful for your time served here....

It could never happen? Could it? Surely not! not to “Mug City”, sorry, “Norwich City” any other sporting director at any other club would be on gardening leave. He’s spending our money and linked to our league rival. The board should be ashamed of themselves.

Indeed. I was appalled at the time and my view hasn't been changed by subsequent events. We didnt just lose our identity, we willfully threw it in the bin. In the final annalysis you get what you deserve.

In former times I used to stagger home with my dad’s copy of the Sunday Times. Now the worthy Parma has written one of his own! (I’m still staggering about but not necessarily for the same reason). It is most flattering (and not to say embarrassing) to be given so many references but amongst them there is the challenge I have quoted here. Firstly, by “our self-awareness” I presume that “our” means the NCFC. In that, I do see a generic weakness which I think needs to be addressed. I don’t see anybody who is going to ensure that this gets done and this is certainly a weakness and the weakness is, I believe, built in, at and around the top. Whoever designed it the present management paradigm is flawed. In reading this please do not think I believe that this is because of any personal inadequacy, particularly that of the owners. In exactly the same circumstances an even older and certainly wiser companion once remarked that most people spend their lives trapped in a cage that they themselves have built. I’m more than sure that Delia and Michael did not foresee their current difficulties when they made their initial investment and now their cage door is troublesome to find. It might turn out that there isn’t one if Michael Attanasio walks away. I have previously written at some length about what I think the management structure should look like, so no more of that. Even with a new structure there would be work to be done. Without doubt all of you want the club to be a success. The question is what will success be like when you get there? One standard criterion is that the club will have a large and faithful cohort of “delighted” customers. This is the root of the problem that is causing and will cause the dilemma for any club management. The customers are the paying supporters of all kinds, and they are clearly delighted by different outcomes. At one extreme are the purists who want to see wonderfully skilful football and at the other those who want the club to win as many points as possible, which is done by cheating. I can no more reconcile these extremes than anybody else and it is not for me to do so anyway. One thing I might do is to try to analyse the question as to whether these extremes do in fact reflect good and bad corporate behaviour. I base the following on personal experience. Patience, per piacere, I’ll get back to NCFC in a minute or two. The Soviet Union disintegrated thirty years ago. Shortly after that I was asked to go out and establish new business ventures in those territories. I spent the next four years living there, in two different countries, with a local office in a third. The few expats who were there at that time lived in in their expat bubble in the grotty ex-Intourist hotels. In each country I chose to live as my newly recruited colleagues lived, in an apartment that they found for me. That decision opened my eyes not only to their society but to a new understanding of the fragility of my own. People wanted to talk - over the dinner table, at work, during invitations to spend time at the University and at State Enterprises. Of the many surprises was (and is) the nature of “corruption”. Corruption in what had been the Soviet Union was not at all a shortfall from exalted standards, it was (and still is) the standard operating procedure without which the society simply could not function. It is endemic. Everybody knows, everybody does it; it is absolutely normal and universally accepted. Fortunately, our business was with western companies so I was not directly affected. The very simplistic corollary is that if you try to run a business using the Western paradigm in those states you will inevitably fail. You have to play the game according to their rules. Which brings me back to the choices facing NCFC. My conjecture (which I have mentioned before) is that the putative game of Association Football has two similar but different paradigms. The first is that there is a game in the unpolluted meaning of the word, in which all contestants agree to follow the official written Rules of the game and the outcome is decided by skill and athleticism in “fair” competition. This game is considered to be pure and attractive. It is played at schoolboy and maybe a bit higher level (plea of ignorance here). The second paradigm is that there is a game called Association Football that is played at the professional level. In this paradigm most(?) of the Rules are the same but some are always ignored by general consensus and are replaced or added to by sketchily enforced unwritten agreement. This is despised as “cheating”. The whole point of the Soviet analogy is that this is not cheating – the participants are playing a different game by a different set of “agreed” rules. It meets all the criteria for a game but that game is not Association Football as we know it, Jim. For NCFC and any other aspirant club, if you bring a naive game plan into a more “sophisticated” contest where your contestant plays by unwritten rules and you don’t, you will lose. Every time. As you do. The club and you supporters have a choice to make. Maybe, my friend Parma, that is a “weakness” that needs to be resolved. Grazie a tutti, Don

It’s over. Move on (please).

Viz had an explanation for this phenomenon:

☹️

Thing was, that was what many fans wanted, and we all pay the price for that. Farkeball was great when winning the Champs, lousy when finishing bottom of the EPL. Too many asked "why arn't we [[Insert club of the moment]]'' rather than recognising what we were and what we had. Possibly Webber included. If you spend all of your time moaning about why we cannot become an established EPL club you miss that we had beautiful football, inbetweener football, too good for the Champs, not good enough for the EPL. If Farke goes to Leeds, np from me, I wish hime well. We had our chance.

Essex constantly goes on about shares in the club but instead of ignoring him some posters follow him around on here which makes it worse. If people that don't like his posts just ignored or blocked him it really wouldn't be that much of a problem.

I meant he’s literally moved on, last time I checked he plays for Rangers.

Get a grip, he's from Suffolk

Rick and Blossoms singing the Smiths is the best thing I've heard by a mile

Yeah, because personal attacks on peoples physical appearance never upsets anyone. Especially young people thrust into a spotlight they've never had to deal with before. Pathetic CC. Who are you to decide how people get affected by unnecessary and childish criticism? And what triggers it? Mental health is no joke, different people are affected in different ways. Remind me to call BS the next time you moan about being bullied after constantly inviting/supposedly thriving on it. I've never enjoyed your constant posting and frankly embarrassing 'fence sitting'/going with the status quo, but I didn't have you down as this CC.

Well the first responses speak volumes. Well done guys. Well done you.

Something about Lucy...

Oh fück off about Billy Gilmour.

It's primarily only you who brings up Gilmour. He was a waste of a signing for us, did nothing. If he does well then great to him. If he doesn't I also don't care.

Just watched it, made me realise I'm not into that sort of thing 😄

True Grit was entertaining in their posts.

And therein lies the difference TDK. Even when he was playing his best football with us, there was still the incessant focus on his social media, his personal appearance and numerous other factors that had nothing to do with what he was offering on the pitch from a percentage of our fan base. This wasn't love from the stands, it was a minor witch hunt from smaller minded people who wanted to focus on the non-football part of the player instead of what actually mattered. Clearly this had an impact on him on a personal level, alongside other potential issues behind the scenes (that none of us know for sure what happened), and it's no surprise that his performances and apparent attitude tipped as time went on, and it all ended up being a bit acrimonious and from that aspect I can understand a degree of potential bitterness from him about the whole. It's incredibly easy for us to sit here and look at the wages and the fame and pay no attention to how these things impact your daily life, outlook and demeanour, and I do feel that if there'd been less focus on this, and more on getting behind the lad, then it could have been very different. In the end, the move was the best choice for all parties, and I'm pleased he's back enjoying his football and getting the plaudits he deserves from the Rangers fans, because much like getting rid of Farke and Buendia, the handling of Cantwell seems to have been another failure to some degree from the club, and certainly from the fans who hounded him relentlessly, and it could all have been very different IMHO.

Sorted.!!.. very easily.

Always the victim our Todd shouldn’t let comments on social media affect him as a professional football it’s part of it unfortunately! I do wonder if the comments he’s made there are directed at internal people within the club?

I'd rather he was playing for us than impressing at Rangers.

True enough, and actually the band asked me to deputise, but my hair stylist couldn't get me ready in time.

He's found a club he enjoys being at, and while I still think he has an annoying habbit to love attention (And yes I am aware of the irony of me of all people saying this thank you) it's good for him that he can enjoy his time on the pitch.

Yet more drivel, Parma waxes lyrical about Footy because he knows it , he's been involved, his interest is not pecuniary, though of course it is a major factor. I dont need Parma to telĺ me the desrination of the bus....because we all choose the bus we get on. I'm on a pretty content bus , I understand that mistakes have been made but i also realise that endless whining at the other passengers will not change the direction of the bus...for that you must go to the bus company's open forum and state your case, you are the one with the gripes, go gripe at those who are paid to listen , nod appreciatively, and then ignore you. All the while thinking to themselves " if this Clown could only grasp the meaning of ' for the life of the purchaser'...then he wouldn't have wasted months , if not years of everyones time with this barely concealed personal agenda disgùised as concern for ' his' club " Now go away.

I'm desperate to see a new start, and I think the club is, too. Webber is now history, however we finally evaluate his tenure at the club. It makes no sense for him to be sticking around, making key decisions that affect our future. The new SD should be in the door as soon as possible, making his own decisions and starting to introduce his vision. Because what we have at the moment - more blood, sweat, tears, experience and some sh*thousery - is not a vision. It is the template for almost every club in the Championship bar relegated teams and Swansea. What worries me about the upcoming season is that they will all be better at it than we are because they've been doing it for so long and we seem happy to sacrifice the skill levels that raised us above this mediocrity. The decline in the technical ability of our squad since the last promotion is frightening. Because of his high opinion of himself, Webber probably genuinely believes that he is helping the club by hanging around, but he isn't. He should gracefully step down, happy to hand over the things that should be an advantage for his successor - the infrastructure, the training facilities, the youth set-up - so let's get the new guy here and see what he can do.

It looks like he is concerned that a whole month has passed without any mention from Norwich fans and he's worried that he isn't at the forefront of our minds any more, so he needs to make sure he takes his rightful place as the centre of attention again. Whilst I agree with @hogesar's comments that some of the stick he got was over the top and unnecessary, there's no doubt in my mind that Cantwell himself is at least equally responsible by fanning the flames with this type of social media post at every given opportunity. In fact, he probably enjoys it; he clearly craves attention and cannot seem to handle not being talked about.

See, the point is that I never gave, and never will give, two sh1ts about what players look like, what they do in their personal life, or their sexual orientation. It’s of no absolutely interest to me. I just care about whether they deliver on the pitch.

Shame most of his shots here were fired wide.....

As it's Sunday night I will opt for pith in what is actually a complicated question. Having seen Bobby Brennan, Clive Woods (yes, I know, ex-Ipswich, and past his best and all that, but even so...), the fitful but sometimes unplayable Jimmy Neighbour, Mark Barham, Darren Eadie and Darren Huckerby, I struggle with a "never mind the width, feel the quality" transfer policy that leaves the club with Onel Hernandez as its first-choice winger in the Premier League. Doesn't strike me as any kind of dream.

Whilst this might not be 100 percent true, I do think we are not the most forward thinking club when it comes to planning, if we were we have had since March, Webber is still here and that does imply a lack of succession planning.

It's a good job Adam Idah hasn't taken to cryptic statements on social media .

Yes he was quite incredible in his negativity as well

" 'It's nice knowing' that worrying about what people thought of my clothes and hair was actually such a trivial thing to be concerned about. How lucky I was. I should have made the most of my opportunities at Norwich. I am not going to make the same mistakes at Rangers. I have learnt a valuable lesson and grown up a bit. I am going to try to stop ruminating about the past" - maybe a more appropriate statement from someone with maturity and humility. He sounds too much like Harry Windsor.

Yep, Rome wasnt built in a day, this guy has done some decent work and some not so good, he's a bit bristley and seems to have lost direction... something that initially impressed me was his clear message and no nonsense approach, this has now run its course and I believe he's reached his sell by date, seems he has realised it too. Cheers Stu , Good start , not so great finish.... unless of course we're firing on all cylinders pretty damn quick next season. No vitriol from me , just a feeling that we were very close at one point to it really clicking and kicking on. I'm not one for rewriting history but feel just a few key decisions, made differently and we wouldn't be wishing ...why aren't we( insert name here) .

one of the biggest supported teams in world football , 50000 fans adoring you at home games and european football , Living in a Big City , Some of the best countryside and areas to explore on his doorstep and more money than he can spend bet he is gutted !!

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a hot take but... If Farke goes to Leeds I don't expect him to last the season. His football always takes a long time to bed in and requires patience he just won't get. If they sit 13th after 15 odd games the fans will turn and the trigger will be pulled. He gets excuses made for him for Gladbach but he seemingly hadn't learned his lessons about how to organise a defence. Not to mention I'm still not convinced about how he'll do in a team without a Buendia like creative weapon. Farke was perfect for us but we were also perfect for him. A team that could be rebuilt in his image with an SD who hired him and a fanbase that are largely quite patient. Maybe if it is Webber for the SD he'll get more patience but we'll see.

Love reading your posts, but sad at the melancholy of the latest run. Largely, this is down to how much I agree with them. However, success is often crafted by learning from mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes take a while to undo and I have to optimistically hope that we are starting the process of repair. As you said, some of the signings are there to address the situation we find ourselves in so that seems like a logical starting point, from which to build once more to garner a bit of positive momentum has to be the modest goal for this season, whilst perhaps acknowledging that courting new ownership needs to be gathering positive momentum itself. Non mollare! Riprovaci. As Vince Lombardi said: Non importa quante volte cadi. Ma quante volte cadi e ti rialzi.

Learning to deal with those criticisms and try not to take them too personally is an important lesson too, and he's probably at a much better age to be more confident in himself is probably another part of how he feels today, I don't know if we're particularly bad for it round here, or if he would've experienced it at other clubs coming through as a young player? I only know of my own existence and experience of life as a Norwich supporter. But there's been some really poor attacks on how he looks and acts, many questioning his sexuality, calling him a fairy... All this kind of stuff, while what's being said doesn't offend me personally. I just can't work out why our own fans would seek to belittle one of our own young talents on how they look or act,

See the thing is I don't really remember an awful lot of unprompted hair-bashing or clothes criticism, the TC narrative is pretty much entirely given life by the guy himself. Much like in this instance, nobody was talking about Cantwell until he sparked it. We have plenty of players given much worse social media abuse, who haven't found any need to publicly sound off at all. When he gets over it, everyone else will.

All will turn out OK. Putin is famous for forgiving those who go against him.

I will always remain disappointed by the change of direction post Farke, but yes, this is probably the only way left to go since they threw the baby out with the bath water.