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Hi everyone! This is my first post and I'm a pretty new football fan, so take it easy on me! I have recently become a Norwich City fan after seeing their amazing Mental Health video they posted back in October (I'm sure most of you have seen this). As some background, we lost my uncle to suicide back in January of 2022 - needless to say it shattered our world and this video really hit home. I'm from Canada, live just outside Toronto. A lot of my friends are into football and cheer for some EPL teams, I had just never gotten into it much. After this video, I figured I'd dive ALL IN. I did some research and stumbled upon these fourms, and figured I'd make a post and seek some advice from the community of fans. I've had some thoughts as I've watched matches recently and was hoping some on here could help! What are things I NEED to know as a Norwich supporter? Are there podcasts, YouTube channels, Twitter/IG accounts I should follow? I noticed on the Canaries website that their is a "Toronto Canaries" supporter group - anyone know anything about this? Rowe seems like he is a stud - always seems to come up with the big goal. But why does he come out of games early often? There seems to be a lot of distaste towards Barnes on these fourms. I quite like his aggressive style of play (I come from a hockey background - he seems like he'd be a bully hockey player!) On a similar note, I was a goalie when I played hockey, and I really like Gunn. He seems real composed and makes a ton of big stops at important moments. This group doesn't seem sold on Wagner as the leader - why is this? He definitely seems passionate. Any other advice as a new supporter? Also to share, you can see the big merch box I was lucky enough to get for Christmas yesterday from my fiance - definitely got spoiled but now I'm all in. And spending this morning with footy & Team Canada World Junior Hockey - what better! Thanks everyone!

Given that it looks like he’ll soon be back on the market; would you take Wayne Rooney as a replacement for Wagner? Young ambitious, elite level player…what’s not to like?

Don't get me wrong, if Wagner was replaced tomorrow I wouldn't be fussed. But I think hammering him today is harsh. Some folk will stay on here all night moaning and groaning but I think its best to swallow the defeat, have a nice evening doing something fun and move on to Milwall.

LOL I don't have a huge problem with the subs otherthan I would have given Idah a bit more time, but even then bearing in mind we play again Friday it was sensible not to run Idah into the ground. Rowe is useless as a loan striker; too weak. We almost pegged them back in the last 5 mins. I'm not a Wagner fan but didn't see too much wrong with today. If anything, the tactical changes he made in our 6 game run got us where we are today.

It's his MO. When he can't actually back his opinion up he gets ****ty while also accusing everyone else of being snarky.

He really wasn’t, one person ruined this for us and it wasn’t the ref, Sainz ill discipline was ridiculous. I am sure a few of the seniors in our team will educate him.

No it was ruined when Sainz pulled out an imaginary card

Had this been a few months back, and down to ten men, we would have seen goals aplenty shipped. We didn't we kept it to the one goal. Of course, this has upset the anti-club types on here. Webber is gone so he cannot be blamed. But disliking the club allows them to attack Wagner. His tactics today were so awful that...... we errr, ......only conceded the one goal. Football is as much about what you do, as stopping what they do. Spot on with the latter today. And towards the end it was the WBA keeper wasting time and the two WBA commentators getting nervous. Wagner certainly has the players motivated, as the result and display showed. I see a massive improvement in quite a few players. That is what will count in the second half of the season as we mount a promotion challenge. Having the ability to do it and the drive to achieve it. It should be fun and a huge improvement on where we were in the autumn. Roll on Millwall.

I'm something of an absolutist about this issue because I have friends who've refereed at lower levels who quit because of the constant abuse they get for a job they get **** all money for and that football couldn't function without. Part of the reason we're so short of qualified refs is that they keep quitting before they get anywhere because there is a climate in football where constant abuse and physical threats are considered ok. There is a very direct pipeline from things people see on sky sports to what happens on Sunday league pitches. Sometimes it's harmless stuff like a 20 stone lardarse trying a rabona, but often it's people getting up in refs faces because Haaland does it. The top of the game needs to crack down hard and lead by example.

I used to get into loads of dumb tít-for-tat ad hominem arguments on here, and I just can't be arsed with it any more. If you want to carry on discussing refereeing sensibly like you were earlier, I'm happy to. Your last comment didn't really give me that impression is all. No desire to start slinging sh*t around, especially with people who support the same team as me.

"CHAAAAAAAAANCE"

Referee last night **finishes applying heavy black eye make up** **puts CD in CD player** ”I tRiEd sO hArD AnD GoT sO FaaaaR!!” “i’lL sHoW ThEm! i’Ll ShOw tHeM fOr uSiNg NauGhTy WoRds!!!” **Rehearses dissent yellow card situation for the 90th time**

I mean, what kind of two-bit troglodyte - even at Sunday league level - starts dissenting to a referee only a few minutes after going into the book for a foul? Jaysus, that's amateur hour.

Hmmm...... er.....................er.........................

It is a good question, but this debate is based on Don's admitted limited understanding. It would be worth @Don J Demorr reading Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch to get an understanding of the lot of a football fan. The experience is generally of failure or at least persistent humdrum disappointment. Success is rare, fleeting and ephemeral. There are clubs in the EFL that have never won anything, and will never win anything beyond the occasional promotion to League 1 to be followed by a matching releagtion. Even "Big" clubs can survive for decades without a trophy. Clubs are social enterprises, not businesses. They are not run for profit (with the possible exception of Man U). Generally every penny, and more, goes on the search for the transitory feeling of success. The only way to make a small fortune from club ownership is to start with a big one. Players, agents, the media all make money from the game but not clubs. The essential duality of professional football is that they are also a sporting endeavour. The greatest indicator of success is the injection of cash. Clubs with the most money tend to sign the best players and coaches. The teams with the best players win more often than not. They can also invest more in scouting, conditioning and development. They do not need SWOT analysis, sporting data analytics has alreading gone much further than that. The analysts know where, how far and how fast the players run, the duels they win and lose as well as the profiles of the players they beat/lose to, their strenghths, weaknesses. Artificial Intelligence will soon be able to map out "what-if" analysis of entire games, possibly entire seasons. Money is king, this is expensive stuff and the arms race will be led by the clubs with deepest pockets.

OK, I'm Gunna Gibson thought Norwich themed Christmas puns. That's a Barnes-storming Idah. How about: We Hwang some baubles from the tree that Gibbs us Christmas ecStacey

This is why I agreed with @littleyellowbirdie's comment from earlier about having a zero-tolerance approach to dissent as in rugby. Only the captains may speak with the referee, and they may only speak respectfully. If they implemented that in English professional football it would be absolute bedlam for a few weeks, but before long you'd have players hauling each other AWAY from officials rather then encircling them like a pack of hyenas. Coupled with the 10-minute sin bin rule for dissent, it would be a breath of fresh air for the game. Sadly the most senior decision-making bodies in the game have turned a blind eye to rabid dissent for too many years now, and they'll never do anything other than skirt around the edges of the issue and double down on the status quo. As for your last point, if a referee was encouraged to report acts of dissent separately to be dealt with off-field later, their notebook would be full after 15 minutes. Sadly it's part of the tapestry of the modern game that elite-level referees are instructed (and programmed) to ignore all but the most obvious and heinous examples of dissent/abusive language. A few weeks ago Lewis Dunk became the first PL player to be given a straight red for abusing a referee for fifteen years. How can that possibly be an acceptable example to set?

I am no Wagner fan, but being at the game today I can honestly say the subs each time seemed about right, and to be fair to him ( for once, I am not normally ) the substitutions got us close to grabbing a point.

Well yeah, but apart from all the times substitutions have won us points, or kept us from conceding, they've done nothing.

Both decisions were justified yellows. The referee didn't break any rules or make any wrong decisions, both were made in accordance with the laws of the game. If you want to obfuscate and say it was harsh, or players don't always get booked, or this player did the same thing and avoided punishment, then I am sure you are correct, but that's completely besides the point. The fact is that Sainz is supposed to be a professional footballer and simply let his team-mates down today by acting as he did, particularly after receiving a yellow card just a few minutes before. Hopefully this is a lesson he will learn quickly, as there's no question he has great abilities and is one of our best attackers.

With a broad brush, the point I'm trying to make is that the prevailing attitude is that referees can – and do – get an awful lot wrong. There's nowhere near enough in-depth analysis of how difficult refereeing is, of how many good and/or consistent decisions are made – and the reason for that is because fans don't want to hear it, because it's boring and/or inconvenient when they can just apply the confirmation bias and blame it on the w*nker in the black who has nobody to defend them. So we end up with a never-ending cycle of confirmation bias where we analyse referees' mistakes in minute detail, gladly tot up all those inconsistencies and errors, and universally see the officials as bloodsport on a Saturday afternoon. How can the standards improve from grassroots upwards in that kind of environment? Your comment about rugby refereeing is one that I really think should be considered; as a rugby fan too, it's so refreshing to see referees being treated with respect rather than utter contempt. Football is an incredibly fluid game with a million grey areas. You simply cannot corral everything that happens on a football pitch into neat little boxes that can be applied 100% consistently.

Yes. Nice guy, good people person but totally tactically out of his depth. Lunatic subs and zero game management

I mean the subs nearly worked didn't they? Somehow we restricted them to 1 and Hwang nearly scored the equaliser. Certainly today's game doesn't deserve any comments of inept. He doesn't exactly have quality to bring off the bench although it is getting better with players returning.

As a Canadian I have 2 words for you Simeon Jackson

Well that's a Yellow then!

Yes the ref will really be making a name for himself by sending off a Norwich player in a non televised game. I'm sure nobody will be talking of anything else across the nation...

I know if it's not the Two Ronnies then what is the point.

Agree with the general point, but Pukki scored double figures in that terrible team. And in his two seasons for us he scored against every club in the Big Six. He was a PL player for sure. But the closest we came to a having a PL team was the season in the middle, with Skipp, Emi and Teemu (and good Todd), when we carelessly weren't in the PL. That team would have had a shot. In an alternative universe where we didn't overachieve in 18-19, and got promoted a year later, we might still have had Godfrey and Lewis too. The role of fate in these things is a little underrated.

It's taken a whole calendar year but Wagner has finally got a nod of approval for his team selection.

No it's not Norwich and I'm no fan of either red or blue half of Liverpool, but this song did make me smile. https://x.com/Evertonzck/status/1736383793575981468?s=20

When I saw that Morecambe and Wise was on on Christmas Eve I decided to give the TV a miss this Christmas.

Now watch the world get offended on everybody else’s behalf over the Chelsea bit!

"As long as Gibson is no where near the starting 11 we could well make the top 6" Not like Gibson has been a vital part of and a first choice player in a season for us in which we got promotion or anything

And Chelsea’s billions … they’re rubbish aswell sadly Newcastle are owned by a state and will eventually win a league title, it may take them a few years and managers ( like citeh) but sadly they’ll do it. what has our beautiful game become give them all a franchise super league

No, but I would have taken Steven Schumacher, who's been snapped up by Stoke.

So you're saying Sainz could have given the w@nker sign and escaped punishment? I need to revisit a couple of my Sunday League fines...

Still don’t like Wagner’s substitutions- make no sense at all

Which other challenges were deserving of yellows? Or should he have given out some more just got fun?

Yeh that's a great read, holty was a great player I remember watching the whole teams heads go up when he came on as a sub once.irreplaceable really. Think the best quote I heard on him was a Ipswich fan who said "He's a big fat cheating ****" I wish we had a big fat cheating ****" Summed him up we loved him, opposition hated him he would buy a free kick then turn to the home fans and indicated that he dived 🤣 Hero plus the best crowd chant of all time "We ****ing love grant holt" on repeat 🤣 Omg and as buh just said, Simeon Jackson, Google his 95th min winner Vs derby omfg

Agree that it would have been way more sensible to call him over, call Kenny over as captain, and give him a final warning. But Sainz isn't blameless, it's an idiotic thing to do even to give the ref the opportunity to give him a second yellow.

And it's that sort of mentality which leads to the incidents we've seen in Turkey recently. The lack of respect towards referees is disgusting and somehow needs to be fixed.

Yes, but at least they get to leave the West Midlands at full time. Unlike the WBA fans.

No two events on a football pitch are the same, and every referee has a different level of tolerance for dissent and backchat. It's literally impossible for rules to objectively be applied consistently. Of course you can find inconsistencies even in the same referee's decisions in the same game, because they have to analyse things in a split second and then make the 'right' call. Unfortunately the partiality of supporters coupled with the the human brain's negativity bias and the importance of every key decision mean that the average fan will always think referees are sh*t/biased/inconsistent.

Wagner was never going to be right whatever subs, but they look sensible. Great to see Hanley back.

On another note, look at the absolute state of the referees tin tin haircut.

Stupid saucy scintillating surprisingly scrumptious Sainz

Sainz shouldn’t be sent off for that, I’m sorry. Referees trying to make a name for himself. Sorry to tell you this mate, but you’ll never be on strictly. You absolute whopper. He knew he wanted to book Sainz the minute he said anything. Just another weirdo referee.

Thank you Big Fish for such a classy reply. I am always happy to learn. I would be fascinated to know whether and how the advent of Messrs Attenasio and Knapper will change the analytical capabilities at Carrow Road and how they will be used. SWOT analysis is at least forty years old, so I'm not surprised it is superseded to some degree but the underlying logic and structure is sound. I would hope and expect that the vastly improved data you describe is used with the same or very similar logic for your own club. The problem I have is that I doubt if such info is shared with opposing clubs so how can a useful balaced comparison be made even with AI? My guess would be that Humint still matters. It would also be informative if the fans knew that some of the team selection and substitutions about which so much controversy exists in these pages were driven by the analysis of data in the manner you so eloquently describe. Is that maybe why recent results are an improvement? Looking at the apparent confusion as to the desired outcome of the club at Board level, I do wonder whether the same sohisticated level of analysis is applied at that level as that you describe for the players. One would hope so. My best to you, sir. Don

"the whole city will slide into the sea" I thought we had until at least 2050 for that to happen?

Carrow road will explode, the whole city will slide into the sea and Delia will reveal herself as the living and breathing Robert Chase.