Mariner

Is there an attempt at humour here - or just gratutitous rudeness?   We obviously have a big re-building job to do but I don''t think this sort of comment contributes anything, except cynicism and an attempt to disparage people who will obviously do their very best.

Kingston-Upon-Hull is a big place but not that big.  The Office for National Statistics publishes key Statistics for Urban Areas as opposed to local goverment areas, after each ten-yearly Census.  The Hull urban area has a population of about 320,000.  That is the city and its immediate suburbs.  By the same token, Norwich comes in at about 190,000.  Norfolk as a whole has a population of about 750,000.   Why do we put ourselves down so much.  In any event, surely a fanbase is determined by the likelihood of people attending.  Hull City are doing very well but I have seen no signs of their attendances exceeding ours.

Yes, we find it very difficult to get away from our positive love of being the little guy against the odds.  "Look at us, here at Stamford Bridge!"  Are we never to escape from this curse that has never affected our neighbours to the south.   I saw every away match in the 1959 cup run but why do we celebrate that success rather than thinking about when we lead the Premier League by eight points at Christmas.  We are not among the Blackburns and the Boltons purely because we are the club that never quite realises our potential.  Our judgements are sometimes atrocious, every time I see Danny Haynes on the box, I wonder who it was that decided he could move on.  Now we have the latest giant-killing attempt out of our system, can we get back to being a club of some size and standing that should not be in in its present position.  Huckerby has it right and my hope is that Grant is the man to cure us of our inferiority hang-ups.  But I fear Delia, for all her strengths, is in love with the word ''little''

I am pleased to see Grant''s foray in to the transfer market and wish our new player every success.   I just wonder a little about the Ipswich signing of Wright as he impressed me during his loan period with us.   I hope we haven''t missed an opportunity or made yet another bad judgement.  Views please.

Your concern is well-founded, this could be a very fateful January for the Club.   I suspect there is a touch of complacency about the Board but if improvement isn''t shown in January, we shall not be too far off spring, when the green shoots come along with the season-ticket renewals.  We have wonderful support but this should not be taken for granted.   25000 gates should mean better stuff than we are getting.  I should like to know last season''s total for players'' salaries and associated payments at Colchester - now there is a really small club that knows how to manage its affairs.  In cidentally it would be nice to see a list of the decision-makers at Norwich City who discarded the likes of Cureton, Dublin, etc.

I wish Peter Grant well but he is treading on some very thin ice at the moment.  The strengths this club has always possessed, whatever nonsense is going on elsewhere, are the great loyalty and support of its fans and the affection in which it is held over a wide area.  Start to alienate the people who make everything possible and you will do terrible damage indeed.  There will be a ''cauldron'' at Carrow Road when there is excitement on the pitch.  Until then, in the words of Clem Attlee during my youth, "A period of silence from you would be welcome".

Listening to the Radio Norfolk ''phone-in after what seems to have been a disaster of major proportions, I was struck by one caller who proclaimed, "So it wasn''t Worthington''s fault then?".   Was the man not here for the best part of six years, is this thin, weak squad not his creation, did he not have autonomy in team affairs?   This is a club where one can always rely upon the most appalling judgements being made, the country is littered with former Norwich youth players.  One shouldn''t be suprised that another one popped in two goals today.  At least it wasn''t Danny Crow, had he been kept, who knows, he might have been doing that for us.  When will it be understood, as Darren Eadie said very well on the radio today, if you haven''t got ball winners in midfield, how on earth can you expect to progress.  The mid-field is the priority and has been for a long time, we can''t afford to field  such players as Robinson and Hughes.

What''s all this about the Ipswich pitch, said to be in "a dreadful state"? (Jason De Vos - EDP 16th Nov.)  Did they not win the prize for the best pitch in the Championship a little while ago and here we are, not through November yet, and it sounds more like March.  I think we came second in the quality of pitch thing and yet Carrow Road looks in very good condition.  We haven''t heard much about this in any other media outlet, certainly not BBC Look East but then I wouldn''t expect anything derogatory there.

I agree with you. I listened to the Neil Adams ''phone-in and one caller was having a go at the Worthy Out brigade.   I think Grant is stuck with a small squad and an over-reliance on a few key players.   Grant may have got re-arranging the furniture wrong today but this is still the house that Worthington built.  All right, he has gone but we are having to deal with what was done over the last six years.  Even allowing for the bright spots - that didn''t last - and a Premiership campaign where the Club was getting its relegation apologies in before we had kicked a ball, overall it was a catalogue of failure and misuse of resources.  I constantly moan when I see the visiting side has half our support and a larger squad.  The Board needs to get back to fundamentals: the team matters before all other things.

I couldn''t agree more with these sentiments.   The normal football processes at another club would have seen a change in the manager''s chair but here we have a manager, on the radio after the match, saying he is not under pressure.   Why should this be?    How can we enjoy such support, attract so much devotion, and be so consistently poor.  Why are the fans, who constitute the club whatever the shareholding may say, so helpless.  There must be change and very soon, or we shall slip into real trouble.   Something at the club, possibly in the Board/Manager relationship. is very wrong.

Rightly or wrongly, I approach each new season in a spirit of optimism, another page has been turned and there is at least a chance that things so obviously wrong before will be put right.   And then I read or hear the Manager''s post-match comments.   Already there seems to be a disparity between what I have seen and Mr. Worthington''s view of what has happened.  On Saturday the game appeared to cry out for change but there was none.  Mr. W. sees it as a positive that we ground away with very little chance of success.   I wonder what it does for the morale of a player like Ryan Jarvis, one of the perennial young hopefuls, to be brought on with but three minutes of normal time to go.  Very little I suspect.  This morning''s Times, The Game, is interesting, their reporter thought things appeared to be better off the pitch than on.  Mr. Worthington''s post-match remarks are quoted ending "You usually get what you deserve", to which the Times man says,  "Norwich deserved nothing". There''s something a little wrong somewhere, it''s funny it is the small matter of the football where the trouble seems to lie.   Is that the one place that must not be tinkered with?   

[quote user="seamus42"][quote user="Herb"][quote user="seamus42"] Unfortunately football has a lot of ground to make up in showing respect to others, and that includes how many refer to our sporting rivals from Suffolk. [/quote] Ipswich isn''t a race, its just a small town in Suffolk. [/quote] You miss the point herb...if you are being serious! of course we are not talking ''racism'' in this context but the underlying agenda of ''respect'' for difference... or lack of it, which often operates at an international level, national level, county level, between towns in the same county, schools in the same town or roads within the same village.  As I said earlier, lets enjoy rivalry without abuse...if both parties dont think its funny...then it aint funny. [/quote]

You ought really to look at urban area populations rather than the population of a local government unit.  Norwich boundaries are very tightly drawn and say nothing about what I would call the real population of the city or indeed the club''s catchment area.  Since 1974 some places, e.g. Colchester, have enjoyed very much enlarged boundaries, the district includes great swathes of countryside.  Try that at Norwich and the locals come out in spots.  You are not comparing like with like.

Browsing Ceefax yesterday, I read the Daily Mirror has reported a Sheepshanks ultimatum to Royle, promotion next season or the sack.   While acknowledging modesty has never been a dominant Ipswich trait, this seems a bit stiff in view of the financial position there.  It contrasts sharply with our own attitude, "Look at us, little old Norwich in the Premiership.  It doesn''t matter if we go down, just enjoy yourselves.".   I would like someone to have the guts to give Worthington a similar ultimatum.  But they won''t, will they?

I have watched the Club steadily since the 1945/6 transitional season.  I don''t think I have ever been more dispirited, not even in the darkest days.  Surely it must be percolating through to the most obdurate of Director minds that there is something very seriously wrong. All of us season-ticket holders make a serious financial contribution to the Club and many of us have made the contribution for next season.  Truly a triumph of hope over recent experience.  We are getting very little for our money at the present time.  And still the man has his supporters!