Petriix

Absolutely this. The lunacy (in which the whole league is complicit) is that players are paid these enormous wages purely on the hope that they can deliver the required level of performance. That implicitly makes any 'Premier League' quality signing an enormous gamble for a promoted club. I was under the impression that Norwich did things differently in that basic salaries were lower with larger performance related bonuses - particularly on promotion or avoiding relegation. However, coupled with the 50% reduction on relegation, this is widely known to be a significant deterrent in our attempts to sign players and goes some way to explain our difficulties in the transfer market. What some people refer to as 'ambition' is actually the financial insanity of committing to unaffordable (in the long term if relegated) wages as a gamble on staying up. Webber tried to do things a different way and it was a costly (but not ruinous) failure. My conjecture is that he should have recognised the futility of what he was trying to achieve and simply not played the game. If we had stuck largely with last season's squad, I can't see how things could have been worse. He talked about changing things in his interview. None of the changes this season have borne fruit.

I for one think it would be great to hear the thoughts of a current Norwich City footballer...

The playing style fell apart when we were attempting to accommodate Billy Gilmour in a 4-3-3. I don't see how you can continue to blame the manager when Dean smith has subsequently come in and gained 17 points from 27 games. Webber has destroyed our squad at enormous expense.

Oh, he's been on the pitch for 90 minutes, just not contributed for the full game. His work rate falls off a cliff at around 60 minutes. Probably because he was always carrying an injury, but possibly because we were always losing by then and he couldn't be bothered to fight.

I totally agree. While I think a team with natural leaders and togetherness can accommodate an enthusiastic loanee or two, I don't think it's possible to function with so many players who don't care about the club. Normann is the perfect example: we've seen flashes of undoubted quality but an overall lack of commitment, especially when asked to work off the ball. I'll never forget watching him lose his man against Watford allowing them a 2 v 1 in our box; that's just not acceptable at any level of the game. We've seen exactly the same from Gilmour - a refusal to do the hard work off the ball, almost as if he believes himself to be above all that. I firmly believe that the majority of our problems lie in midfield. We used to have a strong unit of 5, all working together to win and retain the ball. Wide players who paired up with their respective fullbacks to protect the flanks. CDMs who would drop between the CBs, patrol the edge of the box and track runners from deep. A central number 10 who would operate as a first line of defence, falling into rank when without the ball, but ready to spring into attack and offer some support to Pukki. We need leadership and commitment in the middle of the park. Someone like Milner or Henderson who will hold it all together. I used to think that Tettey lacked positional discipline but, in comparison to the rabble we've assembled this year, I think we really miss him. I'd take Trybull and Stiepermann too over PLM. It's damning that we've spent so much money but apparently gone backwards. There is hope. Once the loanees are gone, PLM could warm the bench, Rashica could be an impact sub, Tzolis could find some form at a lower level, Cantwell might rediscover his mojo etc. But we need one or (ideally) two very solid midfielders in the Skipp mould. Then, with adequate protection in front of them, the defence will also look a lot more solid. With Omobamidele back and another CB signing I think we've got enough ability in there. I even think we could lose Aarons without too much damage. But, to succeed, we need Dean Smith to stop flapping around with different formations and instill a functioning system back into the squad. I think we've seen 4-2-3-1 emerge again as the favoured setup. Now we need to sign the players to make it work, and hopefully some of this high press that we've heard about. I'm not sure he's got the ability to succeed, and I think we'll really miss Farke next season. But I'm hoping to be proved wrong.

I don't get this at all. He was always injured and never managed a full 90 minute performance. He scored one goal and made two assists but his failure to track his man and inability to retain possession in the midfield led to the concession of many more goals. The only reason he gets an easier ride than Gilmour is that Normann was never hyped up as much.

We get it. You're one of the people who cringingly sang "Dean Smith's yellow army". Whatever... The fact is that we were objectively better than Brentford last season and, despite them spending less and having lower wages, we're now objectively worse than them. It makes you wonder why. My observation is that we've tried to change too much. Changing the system, changing the squad, changing the manager have all led to worse performance. You're right. More change now is unlikely to have any benefit. But we're rightly annoyed that we've ended up in this situation with a manager and squad we don't really recognise playing an unfathomable brand of football. No, Dean Smith doesn't get the luxury of a full season to rebuild. We are supposedly building year on year having overcome the financial mismanagement of the previous regime. We need to see some kind of identity and some semblance of evidence that he can get the players playing as a team. Nothing of the sort has been displayed so far.

The biggest loss is the continuity we had under Farke. We should have been upgrading the squad by improving the weakest areas on the pitch while keeping our successful system along with its best players. Instead we sold our best attacker, abandoned our style and brought in a rabble of uncommitted loanees and unintelligent, one-dimensional signings who still have no clue about how to play to our strengths. Watching Rashica take the ball wide and hit head-high crosses today showed just how little understanding he has developed with Pukki over the season, and it bodes badly for the future.

Ok, so he's trying to play a high press when we lose the ball. That's the first inkling we've had about that particular game plan; it's certainly not been apparent on the pitch. But, hey, it's a coherent idea at least. Now all he has to do is realise that it's kamikaze madness to play the wide attacking midfielders so high - the same mistake Farke was making in his first season - as it leaves the fullbacks exposed. Then we just need to sign an entirely new midfield. Getting shot of Normann and Gilmour will fix half the problem. Unfortunately PLM was a permanent signing and our three biggest ever transfers in Sargent, Tzolis and Rashica look to have no greater ability than Hernandez and Placheta who we already had. Sadly I can't see a quick fix to the issues we've got. It's going to take a couple of years of spectacular recruitment to undo the damage done last summer. What would we give now for another year of Vrancic, Tettey and Stiepermann?

Sadly I doubt it actually is over. Unless you're referring to the recent run of success. Mid table Championship mediocrity beckons unless something radically changes. I've seen zero from Dean Smith to suggest that he has a coherent plan for getting these players to perform. The Championship is not easy, even if Farke made it look that way.

There's a huge amount of potential in these returning loanees. In comparison to the known quantities that we've seen abjectly fail this season, I'm excited about the vague possibility that one of them might come good.

I've said it before: Webber is an architect of change. That's previously been a good thing, when we had lots of things that needed changing. But he arguably changed far too much this season, and it's unlikely he'll diverge from his formula this summer. It's no secret that many of us would have preferred less change after the success of last season. There is no right or wrong in this other than observing that what we ended up doing resulted in failure, so any hypothetical alternative might seem more attractive. There's a reasonable argument that we actually need a fair bit of change this window: to undo some of the damage done last summer. I think some of the optimists might be sadly disappointed in the abilities of our three record signings. What we definitely do need is genuine quality; something that Webber has found more difficult to achieve other than with his scattergun approach. Is it better to sign 10 players for £1m each or 1 player for £10m? In the past, some of those bargains have turned out to be Buendia and Pukki while those 'tanks' and 'bazookas' are more like Naismith and RVW.

If managed by Farke then possibly promotion - but we'd need a CDM, I can't see anyone being successful with a 4-4-2 diamond these days.

Point me to the seasons where we achieved more points, won more games or gained more money? I'll accept that finishing 3rd in the Premier League was a greater achievement, but there'd been nothing like it until Farke came along. Webber unashamedly ripped that all to pieces. It remains to be seen what emerges next season.

There's an unfortunate difference between sacking Smith and never having appointed him in the first place. There's a reason why, in our 120 year history, we've had our two most successful seasons in the past four years. Webber is an architect of change when what we needed was continuity. You sadly can't recreate continuity with further change.

Singing bye, bye Stewy, Stewy bye...

Probably don't need to change any of the words, maybe 'baby' to 'Stewy'.

I'm not sure who would want him but, if we can recoup half of what we paid for him then we'll be better off than we are now.

I'm quietly confident that Tzolis will work out as our best signing of that otherwise terrible transfer window. Maybe this is simply because I've watched the others play for an entire season so they've given me ample opportunity to observe just how poor they are while Tzolis is still relatively unknown. I'm looking forward to us eventually settling on an attacking midfield trio of Cantwell, Dowell and Tzolis.

I'm still of the opinion that the emphasis has to be on being 'greater than the sum of our parts'. Having observed Buendia's struggle to make an impact at Villa as well as Cantwell's spectacular decline, I'm left with a clear view that these players probably aren't individually quite as good as we might have believed. So the question becomes more about what they collectively became and how that was lost. I've, separately, pointed the finger at the summer recruitment and the change in system. For his last few months here, Farke was desperately trying to create some synergy out of the new squad. Ultimately he paid the price for this failure, but it's become pretty clear since that it was an impossible task. I'm now fairly clear that the (expensively assembled) squad didn't have that collective capacity. We've repeatedly discussed the points of failure. The Buendia sale was the first (and arguably most obvious) act of self immolation. I focused more on the change of system. Many of us picked out individuals (Gilmour, McLean, Cantwell in particular - depending on your camp). There seems to be an overall consensus that the recruitment was poor, but I simply don't accept that the problem lies solely in financial limitations. I was struck by an observation (apologies but I don't recall which poster or thread and I'm too lazy to find it) that Norwich have been more successful when they've spent less money on promotion. Now, I'm not sure on the absolute accuracy of this, but I'm totally convinced that continuity is a vital part of our recent success. The scale of the changes we made last summer made the survival task impossible. Maybe it's reasonable to accept that better (more expensive) players would be quicker to adapt. Also that Farke, as a stubborn proponent of his own philosophy - which he'd spent 4 years embedding throughout the club - was probably poorly equipped to oversee such a radical reinvention. It begs the question of why we decided to change things so significantly rather than getting bogged down in the minutiae of how. I'm increasingly of the belief that this change was more driven by Webber than Farke - and I'm basing this on supposition, not tangible evidence. I don't think it's a coincidence that Farke had dropped Gilmour and reverted to a central number 10 in a 4-2-3-1 on the day he was sacked. It's almost as if he was making a statement. Webber had already rolled the dice by shaking up the squad. And, like a gambler chasing his losses, he bet again on himself by sacking Farke. It's evident now that the overwhelming change in personnel has been a failure. While you could speculate that last season's squad, managed by Farke, would have been less successful in the Premier League this season, it would certainly have been a better choice in hindsight to stick rather than twist. Spending money doesn't guarantee success. As proven by the other relegated teams in this and recent seasons, you can spend enormously and still fail. On the other hand we've seen some great recent examples of how teams can survive by focusing more on continuity. In any case, there is no realistic scenario in which we get to see the alternative - we'll never have £200m to spend. Maybe it's change itself that caused our downfall. The need to be seen to have tried to compete. Perhaps this is the result of Webber's wanderlust when he might be better off staying still and looking for answers within...

I'll never understand the vitriol towards Todd. As far as I can tell his only crimes have been to have long hair, post on social media and lose form. All the nonsense about his attitude is purely guesswork. My supposition is that his confidence took a battering because his position was removed from our system and, in the handful of chances he was given, he was so completely bereft of support from the worst rabble of midfielders in the league that he simply couldn't figure out how he was supposed to play. Cantwell is the biggest victim of the inexplicable change to the 4-3-3. His strengths lie in rapid transitions from defence to attack. He's great at picking up the ball and moving it forward or pulling defenders out of position to create space for the other attackers to exploit. He's not so good at holding the ball up under pressure when outnumbered, or chasing hopeful punts into the channels. Had we sold him and kept Buendia but otherwise made the same changes to our system then I speculate that we'd probably have suffered a similar fate. Anyone could lose focus when given an impossible job - look, I'm not claiming that he's as good as Buendia, just that he had no chance with the utter dross he was working with. I don't understand why Rashica is given a free pass but Cantwell is given soo much stick. The former has played the whole season with just one (deflected) goal whilst failing to create any understanding with Pukki. If Cantwell had been given the same run in the team, I'm certain that he'd have contributed more. It's nothing short of idiocy to write him off completely, especially when we've now reverted to playing the system he excelled in and will be playing back at the lower level that was more suited to his ability.

I think a combination of 4 and 5 are the only options actually within our control. Surely that's what we've been trying to do already though? It ultimately comes down to not making the same mistakes again. That probably means signing fewer, better players on bigger wages; if we ever get promoted again.

I appreciate your detailed reply; it's great to be able to disagree with intelligent and well reasoned discussion. I don't agree with your assertion: We are talking about winning 3 more games than we've managed this season, not an insurmountable task. I fully believe that the difference of simply making fewer changes and retaining that continuity would have achieved that. Slightly better recruitment, possibly slightly better luck... You're right that it's all about next season, and had been for a long time. But I don't understand this idea that Smith will somehow be constructing a new team over the summer. We'll have extremely limited funds and we have already had too high a turnover of players. Our best hope is that we sign 3-4 decent players, probably at the expense of selling Aarons and Cantwell. He has to work with the players we already have. I have repeatedly said that I'll reserve judgement until 10 games into next season. I'm simply saying that I'm worried by the current trends - for the reasons I outlined.

I just can't agree with this. Under Farke we had an identity. Under Smith we're shambolic. I've witnessed this 'pragmatic' approach. It seems to involve hoofing the ball straight back to the opposition repeatedly. I will always maintain that had we continued with the system from last season (never signed Gilmour, never switched to a 4-3-3 and retained more of the players we had) we would have comfortably stayed up in the same vein as Brentford. People love to repeat the line that 'Farkeball doesn't work in the Premier League' as if it's objective fact. It's not. What is fact is that trying to reinvent ourselves has led to relegation. It's only reasonable to speculate that not doing so may have proved more successful.

Let's go back to the end of last season. We'd won the league with a record points haul. Farke signed a new 4 year contract. We had an identity and a clear vision running through the club. We had the biggest transfer budget in our history. Fast forward to today. Farke is gone. The identity is gone. The money is gone. Unlike our previous relegation the assets are gone too. It's hard to be positive about the future at this point. Regardless of where you lay the blame, things don't look great. I'll reserve judgement until we see what the squad looks like after the summer. After 10 games next season we'll have an idea where we are. I fear we're facing a significant decline.