Petriix

There's about as much chance of dropping a ball bearing out of a jumbo jet at 30,000ft and it landing on an egg sandwich.

Pukki is our only genuine Premier League class player. It was pretty obvious to me that it was him that brought the slight edge of quality to the game on Sunday, I don't think Rashica did anything special other than being in the right place and (for once) actually hitting the target. It hasn't escaped me that he isn't getting any younger, but I am unsure whether we have another year option on his contract like we do with Cantwell.

To be honest, Smith never had any credit with the fans in the first place. While Farke had two Championship titles and the club's record points haul in the bank, Smith has just one win, which we didn't really deserve. It's not a case of losing the fans, he first needs to win them. That is looking increasingly unlikely.

I think it's a reasonable request that we show support during the game and vent frustration afterwards if necessary. Personally I'll find it easier now that Gilmour is out.

It's hard to imagine us either scoring or keeping a clean sheet so something - nil to West Ham. Anyone's guess how many.

I'd argue that it's slightly more ethical relying on a redistributed chunk of Premier League money than relying on the money pumped in by billionaire owners, gained invariably through exploitation and environmental destruction. As uncompetitive as it is, our business model is a beacon of light in comparison to the majority of other clubs.

There's some real hyperbole on this thread. Charlton didn't 'dominate us' neither did Rashica turn the game. It was a fairly even encounter between two well matched sides where one moment (a simple long ball with Pukki's pace, a slightly awkward touch reminiscent of Stiepermann luring the keeper into no man's land and Rashica being in the right place to tap it in) proved pivotal. It's not that we were outclassed, or even particularly lucky to win. It's that we were playing a team who are mid-table in the 3rd tier that is of concern. One would hope that our players would be a class above all over the pitch. They weren't.

We'll have to agree to disagree. He didn't tear a midtable League One defence apart so I think you're being a tad optimistic about the Championship. Feel free to resurrect this thread if he proves me wrong. Remember that he's basically a club record signing for our Premier League campaign. It's not about bashing the club - they won't be reading this. It's more about wallowing in the misery of the current situation so that, if the situation ever improves, I can properly enjoy it again. It's the rubbish times like this which make the good times actually feel good. Forgive me for being underwhelmed by scraping past lowly Charlton in unconvincing fashion.

The midfield is obviously the issue, we have the same defence and attack as last season. But I think you're being generous with 'Championship level', and you're being generous to Rashica. I know he scored, but he really doesn't look look more than a middling Championship player to me. Sargent, PLM and Tzolis looked below par against League One opposition. Rashica looked average. That's our £30m+ of signings, 3 of the club's biggest ever fees paid. None of those would have been in our first team last season.

A hard-fought 1-0 away win at a midtable side suggests we'd maybe be competitive towards the top of League One. Seems about right to me, especially if you compare our Premier League results to the plucky endeavours of some of the lower league clubs in the cup against similar opponents: Morecambe gave Spurs a good fight before ultimately succumbing to their quality, very similar to our recent encounter. Shrewsbury's 4-1 loss to Liverpool compares well to our two 3-0 defeats this season. Although at a slightly lower level, both Swindon and Chesterfield managed to score (while not quite conceding as many as us) in their heavy defeats to Man City and Chelsea (respectively) which is more than we can say. When you look at our 'progress' from last season, it's easy to see how we've gone from being a top Championship club to being closer to League One level. It doesn't bode well for our hopes in the Championship next year. It's pretty unfathomable how we managed to spend so much money on this squad.

Exactly this. He did ok. Strange how people picked him out when PLM was so much worse and Kenny was his usual self.

Some people have so little understanding of the tactical nuances of football it's laughable. Sorensen performed the role asked of him well today and had far better positional discipline than we usually see from Gilmour. He was frequently outnumbered in midfield because Kenny and PLM were all over the place. It was more of the same from this flawed 4-3-3 I've been complaining about all season. We need two, central CDMs but we only play with one and get overloaded. The wide midfielders don't support the fullbacks enough and the CMs get dragged wide leaving acres of space. Sorensen largely worked diligently off the ball and at least made an effort to cut off the passing angles. He may not have been great on the ball, but certainly no worse than our other midfielders. He's basically the opposite of Gilmour, in a good way.

To be honest, I think I like our Championship teams and I don't like our Premier League teams. I detest the business of signing players for the top flight with the inflated fees, wages, egos etc. Every time we go up, we make a bunch of signings which always seem to backfire. I want to see us develop players in the Championship and retain them rather than selling them all and stop blowing stupid money on rubbish players. Looking back, we've signed so much dross. I loved it when we went up under Lambert and basically kept the same squad, same under Farke. I don't mind losing, as long as we haven't spent tens of millions on that bunch of losers. I feel no affinity with any of our recent signings and Dean Smith leaves me cold. I want Norwich to be the club who does things differently. Rather than aspiring to be Everton, I'd much rather keep yo-yoing but retain our identity. It's all a bit late now though, we've blown the money, lost the soul of the club and I fear we are at the start of a long decline.

I believe he only started one of the 10 unbeaten games, otherwise played less than 10 minutes as a sub in a handful of the others. My spreadsheet only covered his first 12 months at the club, in which time we averaged 0.66 points per game he started. I guess we/he probably did better after January 2013 to finish 11th.

I'm happy to forget that first half of the season, as long as we can also forget the awful summer transfer window, the total abandonment of our footballing philosophy and the way we've ripped the heart and soul out of the club in a failed attempt to adapt to the Premier League. Sadly we can't recall Emi, or buy that Skipp replacement, or indeed bring Farke back to orchestrate a similar brand of football to that which gave us our best ever season. So I'm unsure how this fresh start is supposed to go. If you're expecting this squad to miraculously play well enough to keep us up then I fear you're in for some serious disappointment. Maybe if we terminate Gilmour's loan and bring in a proper defensive midfielder then we might at least stop being hammered every week. Weirdly I don't see that happening either. The only positive I can find is that it's times like this which act as a counterpoint to the good times and make the relative success of the occasional Championship title all the more sweet.

It's definitely a weird anomaly rather than being his fault. But it was part of a trend where we attempted to upgrade the squad which ultimately backfired. Howson wasn't really a Premier League quality player, lacking the physical attributes required.

I don't regard Howson as a 'good signing'. His arrival marked the start of a significant downturn in the club's fortunes which led to relegation. There was a bizarre statistical anomaly where we averaged something silly like half a point less per game when he played. I made a spreadsheet about it at the time.

Fixed that for you.

The bar is clearly very low if Placheta is now considered to be doing well. I don't recall him creating a chance, having a shot or even putting in a dangerous ball.

How can you possibly say that, given how awful our current team is? It's hard to do worse than zero goals and zero assists. A massive factor in our failure this season has been the enormous and unnecessary turnover of players. We've replaced some bang average players who were familiar with our team, style, system, country, culture etc. with some bang average players who were totally alien to all of those things. The players we've lost had other attributes such as leadership, charisma and enthusiasm which are conspicuously absent from our remaining squad. Worst of all, we've spent about £30m net to go backwards. We'd be vastly better if we'd simply retained last season's squad minus Emi and Skipp.

We aren't really 3 points from safety though. We're 20 goals worse than Watford so it's 4 points, which is 40% of what we've achieved in half a season. They also have a game in hand. In order to survive we'd have to not only overtake Watford, but be the best out of the bottom 3 teams as well. Burnley have two games in hand and Newcastle have infinite money. We don't have a whelk's chance in a supernova.

One of our most promising youngsters who should be in and around the first team. He would arguably do a better job in the wide midfield areas than some of our regulars. It feels like the club is going backwards.

The FA cup is our last hope of salvaging some credibility from the season. We are already relegated so it's absurd to suggest keeping our best players fresh for the league. We need to play our strongest possible team.

No, it's not depressing at all to realise that we've been far more successful than our finances would dictate. Quite the opposite. What it does highlight is that richer owners doesn't directly translate to greater success. So rather than banging on about getting rid of Delia, people could be more pragmatic about solutions to our issues within our means. It's why, the more this season goes on, the more I regret the vast sums of money we spent in the summer.

Yes. 4-2-3-1 with a double pivot. I might have mentioned it before once or twice. The central number 10 could be more of an 8, no problem. Crucially, the wide players need to be extremely diligent at tracking back and supporting their fullbacks, allowing the DMs to stay central and even drop between the centre backs when needed.