If ever the board needs to keep it's nerve.......

[lake district canary 4,831]

.....it''s now. A difficult season up to now, defending as a team proving difficult, but also near the top most of it and still in striking distance of the top.

So for me the board has to stay strong, not get carried away with the hype and nonsense spouted on social media - and stick with the manager through thick and thin.

I don''t believe for one minute that the crowd should be allowed to influence the board. The board has to be strong, hold their nerve and allow AN to work through the problems - even if the crowd "turns".

We lost out on several managers who could have been long term managers for us - Lambert, who walked. Hughton, who couldn''t get things right in the prem, but would have been a good long term choice if he had been appointed when we were in the championship - and now we come to AN who is another good candidate for a long term manager. We simply have to stick with him, even if things get very rough. The alternative is just more and more short termism which ultimately leads to more instability as a club.

It''s time to let a manager have the reins and see through a period where we can build in the youngsters, develop the team and look more long term. AN is that man and we musn''t let him go just because things have got difficult.

The board tried to stay strong and keep Hughton, but lost their nerve at the wrong moment. I do hope they will have learned from that and stay strong this time. Getting rid of someone like AN would be folly - we need someone to be the Wenger or Fergy for us - or like Dyche at Burnley. AN is that man.

[Captain Birdseye 0]

Looking at Neils 2016 year record he should have gone months ago

[lake district canary 4,831]

Sorry about the formatting - should have been this  .....it''s now. A difficult season up to now, defending as a team

proving difficult, but also near the top most of it and still in

striking distance of the top.

So for me the board has to stay strong, not get carried away with the

hype and nonsense spouted on social media - and stick with the manager

through thick and thin. I don''t believe for one minute that the crowd should be allowed to

influence the board. The board has to be strong, hold their nerve and

allow AN to work through the problems - even if the crowd "turns".

We lost out on several managers who could have been long term managers

for us - Lambert, who walked. Hughton, who couldn''t get things right in

the prem, but would have been a good long term choice if he had been

appointed when we were in the championship - and now we come to AN who

is another good candidate for a long term manager. We simply have to

stick with him, even if things get very rough. The alternative is just

more and more short termism which ultimately leads to more instability

as a club.

It''s time to let a manager have the reins and see through a period where

we can build in the youngsters, develop the team and look more long

term. AN is that man and we musn''t let him go just because things have

got difficult.

The board tried to stay strong and keep Hughton, but lost their nerve at

the wrong moment. I do hope they will have learned from that and stay

strong this time. Getting rid of someone like AN would be folly - we

need someone to be the Wenger or Fergy for us - or like Dyche at

Burnley. AN is that man.

[Move Klose 303]

Don''t talk so much utter drivel. Alex Neil ain''t up to the job.

[ricardo 8,034]

The Board may be patient but I don''t think the crowd will.

[komakino 282]

LDC - It is well known that too many players want out and are not playing for him. While NCFC''s problems do not end there, the current situation between players and manager is toxic.

AN has to go as soon as a credible replacement is targeted, but it is simply delusional to think he can turn this around. He made a big mistake in keeping players who had EPL offers and others that should of been sold, hence we are in the situation we are in. Just incase you weren''t aware:

THEY ARE NOT PLAYING FOR HIM.

[Rogue Baboon 0]

In all if that you have not put forward one reason for keeping him...

You say keep him, yet have not given 1 half decent enough reason. You say we needn''t a Wenger or Fergie, that type of manager has gone a long time ago except.

Alex Neil is showing nothing at the minute to warrant keeping him, yet you suggest that keeping him, well, just because.

Blindly backing a manager who is clearly failing, I''m sure we have been here before...

[City 2nd 193]

Sorry Lakey, but the crowd will influence the board, not just at NCFC but at every football club. No crowd = no season ticket sales = in our case a loss of vital income. Without that the owners have to start stumping up, and having just taken their payment of previous loans back, I doubt they will be wanting too put too much

back in at a time of great financial awareness across the globe. So in my opinion the crowd do hold sway, and the next few days will reveal just how much! Let''s face it, it''s not about the now, this decline has been going on since the Wembley win!

[Capt_Canary 0]

LDC you have lost the plot like AN unfortunately.

Biggest mistake will be to keep him and see us further deteriorate.

We still have a chance of the play-offs but not under AN. The players look shot.

AN has lost the players. How can a team going for promotion lose 5-0 to Brighton. He doesn''t know his best team. He picks the same defence after our heaviest loss this season.

Yesterday you probably weren''t there and being an armchair fan hence these threads but no subs for 70 mins. His buys have been poor and non existent. Where was Canos, where was Pritchard?

[Capt. Pants 5,013]

Even now he doesn''t know his best starting eleven or even his best back four. He has to go otherwise I see a very bleak future. Bringing in young players is fine to a point, but football is a results based business and all about the here and now. Now AN is so out of his depth. I would be delighted to be proved wrong I really would, but I just cannot see it happening.

[zippy23255 0]

I think Alex Neil got it spot on with this quote yesterday "It is tough because my job is to set up the team and win games and with the squad we have got we should be doing better than we are doing,” .

Most of our players are good enough to be doing a lot better than this so it is his fault they are underperforming. I agree with others on here that he has lost the dressing room. How can Klose be playing as bad as he is? Tettey gets into the team whenever he is available. He is a liability at the moment with his woeful passing, We cannot keep possession with him in the team.

True we have a couple of players injured who would get straight into the side and we do need strengthening at the back and a better striker but what we''ve got should cope better.

It''s time for a change, someone who can set the team up with the best players for the job and get these players playing how they can play.

[Lessingham Canary 108]

Yesterday you probably weren''t there and being an armchair fan hence these threads but no subs for 70 mins. His buys have been poor and non existent. Where was Canos, where was Pritchard?

Exactly, why so long for subs ? why not Lafferty, that game yesterday was crying out for him ( and i am not a Lafferty fan) he would have ran himself into the ground and caused some problems for the QPR defence. Sorry but the time is right for AN to go, this is a results driven business.

[JF 694]

Totally agree. Its a very similar situation as to when Gunn was in charge. Clearly the Colchester result, and recent relegation was just a blip. Long term is always the best policy no matter what the managers ability is. If you throw a 🎲 for long enough no matter how many double ones you throw, eventually you will get a double 6. Had we given Gunn all these years then who knows where we may have been now? Instead the board panicked and hired that bloke who just had one of those lucky days where 1 in every 5 shots his team had went in! Personally I''d like to see Delia come out and put her money where her mouth is. give him the ten year contract and let''s just keep rolling that dice.

[Highland Canary 78]

Ricardo - the away crowd is only muttering at the mo and was as quiet as I''ve ever heard it yesterday with 3k present. His job is safe even following the next two defeats. He''ll struggle on until Christmas while the board look at 1p5wich''s business model as they chart our next decade. You couldn''t make it up.

[Lessingham Canary 108]

Highland wrote;

Ricardo - the away crowd is only muttering at the mo and was as quiet as I''ve ever heard it yesterday with 3k present. His job is safe even following the next two defeats. He''ll struggle on until Christmas while the board look at 1p5wich''s business model as they chart our next decade. You couldn''t make it up.

Exactly this, even the chants of "Neil sort it out" were muted, in a perverse way the sending off tempered everything, imo.

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,462]

To some degree the answer to stick or twist lays in the hoary old chestnut question of what constitutes reasonable expectations.

As every good businessman knows, perfection is not on offer. 7/10 is frustrating after a period, though it represents great success if alternative strategies reach no higher than 5/10. This is a hard position to defend or prove and ''keeping on, keeping on'' is not testosterone sexy.

....History may point to the future...

Alex Neil came in at a relatively benign time for a new manager, he himself stated that one would usually expect to inherit a team in a much worse initial state than he did.

As a club our recent events and successes have been somewhat against the grain of our historical performance norms. Multiple promotions to the top league, Play off victories, staying up in consecutive seasons, enormous financial outlay on the most expensive squad ever assembled. A recent game saw us with £30m worth of talent on the bench...in the Championship.

We should assess Neil in the light of Managers within this recent historical context. How we got here, what success we had and perhaps why.

Lambert is the most heralded - and rightly so - however in the wonderful whirlwind there are structural elements and particularly favourable circumstance that are overlooked.

Just as Neil pointed out that he inherited a good situation from a Managerial perspective, so did Lambert.

The club had been through an extraordinary blood-letting period prior to Lambert''s arrival. Due to severe financial constraints, a Doncaster-inspired policy of reducing fixed costs by employing huge, regular swathes of loanees had seen the club in a position with very few senior players on the books. The extended grind of surviving repeatedly in the lower reaches of the Championship had sucked much of the quality and unity out of the playing resources to the point that League One relegation was almost cathartic.

Lambert started with an almost blank canvas in Management terms, an almost unique position of being able to entirely reshape the playing squad in his own image with his own vision, without any of the deadwood normally associated with failed regimes. It is his deadwood that kills modern clubs and binds the hands of many a manager, often spreading assorted viruses and infecting good new work that may be done.

Lambert built well, with young, hungry, impressionable players that owed him their chance and who grew together. This is very, very much more difficult in reverse. Retaining good players who have come down a level, re-motivating, setting new goals and creating inspiration after failure.

In this context - and at the tail-end of the Lambert upward-trajectory comet - Hughton did very well to drag out the momentum after the peak of the players'' abilities had been reached. Survival a second year was a good achievement. His somewhat defensive approach must be seen in this light. It arguably suited his natural proclivities, but defensiveness was (and is) the the most controllable coaching refuge available to the inferior.

Neil Adams is a good man who injected life and love back into the stands and provided the psychological firebreak transition from the negative death-spiral to attacking, Norwich-way football.

This firebreak transition is key to our perspective on how Alex Neil is performing.

We are a weak team in the Premier League. We will lose a lot of games. Unfortunately we will lose games when we don''t do our best, but crucially - from a coaching perspective - we will also lose when we do do our best.

The enormous changes that have occurred in the Premier League due to high finance simply cannot be ignored here. As we have identified repeatedly in the Masterclasses, you can now easily find yourself oxymoronically as a club having spent tens of millions of pounds on players that are suited to the Premier League, but conversely relatively ineffective in the rough-and-tumble of the Championship. Some of the skills you need for the Championship are redundant in the Premier League and skills that are pre-requisite (and very expensive) for the Premier League are of no great value in the Championship. Ally this to the fact that having been relegated you are de-facto used to losing, plus you will have players that are psychologically despondent at being out of the limelight and who may well realise that despite dropping a level that their style is not going to shine in the Championship and you have a toxic mix.

Further to the Masterclasses, this is where the difference between good players and ''weapons'' becomes most stark.

Simply ''being better'' than the opposition is a difficult tactic now at along levels. Clubs are more tactically advanced and spiking tactics are effective against teams trying to be better (typically opening the spaces rather than closing them, coming out of structural shape to repeatedly create chances and score goals).

Those of you who have repeatedly offered that you would be happy ''if we just went after teams'' and ''played on the front foot'' should review that statement. You actually have to be a great deal better than the opposition for that to work and you may well still lose if they have a Defoe/Crouch/Pedersen weapon to hand.

Clubs in Norwich''s position should buy weapons upon promotion, not good players.

So, Alex Neil.

Building a structure, a philosophy though a club, from youth to first team, with coaches all of of a mindset, with a firm conflation with the nature of the club itself and its soul is brilliant and should be aimed for and implemented root-and-branch at Norwich City.

However the actualite'' of English football, the schizophrenic nature of haves and have nots, the impact financially, psychologically, football-technically and structurally of yo-going between the top two tiers may well mean that sometimes the football equivalent of ''turning it off and turning it on again'' is a necessary course of action.

Having invested heavily in the education of Alex Neil it would a philosophical climbdown to remove him from his post - particularly with the club in the play off positions. However starting slowly and accelerating to this position would have inevitably been treated differently to the current poor run which sees a somewhat autistic repetitiveness to events, approaches and remedies.

Perhaps the Spanish have it right. Change for change''s sake is necessary to cauterise old wounds and reset the success button.

...but aren''t we actually quite successful?

Parma

[ricardo 8,034]

[quote user="Highland Canary"]Ricardo - the away crowd is only muttering at the mo and was as quiet as I''ve ever heard it yesterday with 3k present. His job is safe even following the next two defeats. He''ll struggle on until Christmas while the board look at 1p5wich''s business model as they chart our next decade. You couldn''t make it up.[/quote]I tend to agree with you HC.It''s results that AN needs now if he is going to save himself. The Board can be as supportive as they like but they can''t sit back forever while everything goes down the pan. Things might eventually turn upwards but there will be a cut off line if they don''t.Auto promotion went out of the window in September IMO. The goals against column and unconvincing performances were a signal flashing red for those with eyes to see. The Playoffs are still possible but not if this form continues much longer.I hope it all comes together for his and the clubs sake but the hill gets steeper the further you slide down.

[Canary Wundaboy 1,423]

We''ll lose away at Derby, if it all goes wrong at home against Brentford I can see things turning nasty.

[morty 0]

[quote user="Parma Hams gone mouldy"]To some degree the answer to stick or twist lays in the hoary old chestnut question of what constitutes reasonable expectations.

As every good businessman knows, perfection is not on offer. 7/10 is frustrating after a period, though it represents great success if alternative strategies reach no higher than 5/10. This is a hard position to defend or prove and ''keeping on, keeping on'' is not testosterone sexy.

....History may point to the future...

Alex Neil came in at a relatively benign time for a new manager, he himself stated that one would usually expect to inherit a team in a much worse initial state than he did.

As a club our recent events and successes have been somewhat against the grain of our historical performance norms. Multiple promotions to the top league, Play off victories, staying up in consecutive seasons, enormous financial outlay on the most expensive squad ever assembled. A recent game saw us with £30m worth of talent on the bench...in the Championship.

We should assess Neil in the light of Managers within this recent historical context. How we got here, what success we had and perhaps why.

Lambert is the most heralded - and rightly so - however in the wonderful whirlwind there are structural elements and particularly favourable circumstance that are overlooked.

Just as Neil pointed out that he inherited a good situation from a Managerial perspective, so did Lambert.

The club had been through an extraordinary blood-letting period prior to Lambert''s arrival. Due to severe financial constraints, a Doncaster-inspired policy of reducing fixed costs by employing huge, regular swathes of loanees had seen the club in a position with very few senior players on the books. The extended grind of surviving repeatedly in the lower reaches of the Championship had sucked much of the quality and unity out of the playing resources to the point that League One relegation was almost cathartic.

Lambert started with an almost blank canvas in Management terms, an almost unique position of being able to entirely reshape the playing squad in his own image with his own vision, without any of the deadwood normally associated with failed regimes. It is his deadwood that kills modern clubs and binds the hands of many a manager, often spreading assorted viruses and infecting good new work that may be done.

Lambert built well, with young, hungry, impressionable players that owed him their chance and who grew together. This is very, very much more difficult in reverse. Retaining good players who have come down a level, re-motivating, setting new goals and creating inspiration after failure.

In this context - and at the tail-end of the Lambert upward-trajectory comet - Hughton did very well to drag out the momentum after the peak of the players'' abilities had been reached. Survival a second year was a good achievement. His somewhat defensive approach must be seen in this light. It arguably suited his natural proclivities, but defensiveness was (and is) the the most controllable coaching refuge available to the inferior.

Neil Adams is a good man who injected life and love back into the stands and provided the psychological firebreak transition from the negative death-spiral to attacking, Norwich-way football.

This firebreak transition is key to our perspective on how Alex Neil is performing.

We are a weak team in the Premier League. We will lose a lot of games. Unfortunately we will lose games when we don''t do our best, but crucially - from a coaching perspective - we will also lose when we do do our best.

The enormous changes that have occurred in the Premier League due to high finance simply cannot be ignored here. As we have identified repeatedly in the Masterclasses, you can now easily find yourself oxymoronically as a club having spent tens of millions of pounds on players that are suited to the Premier League, but conversely relatively ineffective in the rough-and-tumble of the Championship. Some of the skills you need for the Championship are redundant in the Premier League and skills that are pre-requisite (and very expensive) for the Premier League are of no great value in the Championship. Ally this to the fact that having been relegated you are de-facto used to losing, plus you will have players that are psychologically despondent at being out of the limelight and who may well realise that despite dropping a level that their style is not going to shine in the Championship and you have a toxic mix.

Further to the Masterclasses, this is where the difference between good players and ''weapons'' becomes most stark.

Simply ''being better'' than the opposition is a difficult tactic now at along levels. Clubs are more tactically advanced and spiking tactics are effective against teams trying to be better (typically opening the spaces rather than closing them, coming out of structural shape to repeatedly create chances and score goals).

Those of you who have repeatedly offered that you would be happy ''if we just went after teams'' and ''played on the front foot'' should review that statement. You actually have to be a great deal better than the opposition for that to work and you may well still lose if they have a Defoe/Crouch/Pedersen weapon to hand.

Clubs in Norwich''s position should buy weapons upon promotion, not good players.

So, Alex Neil.

Building a structure, a philosophy though a club, from youth to first team, with coaches all of of a mindset, with a firm conflation with the nature of the club itself and its soul is brilliant and should be aimed for and implemented root-and-branch at Norwich City.

However the actualite'' of English football, the schizophrenic nature of haves and have nots, the impact financially, psychologically, football-technically and structurally of yo-going between the top two tiers may well mean that sometimes the football equivalent of ''turning it off and turning it on again'' is a necessary course of action.

Having invested heavily in the education of Alex Neil it would a philosophical climbdown to remove him from his post - particularly with the club in the play off positions. However starting slowly and accelerating to this position would have inevitably been treated differently to the current poor run which sees a somewhat autistic repetitiveness to events, approaches and remedies.

Perhaps the Spanish have it right. Change for change''s sake is necessary to cauterise old wounds and reset the success button.

...but aren''t we actually quite successful?

Parma[/quote][Y]

[king canary 8,758]

The idea of a ''long term'' manager at this level is a bit of a myth- generally managers either do well enough to get us promoted or underachieve and get sacked. When the minimum expectation is promotion there is not much wiggle room.

Also Neil has had nearly two years here and four transfer windows to make this squad his own, yet can we honestly say we''ve improved? On paper this squad is stronger than the one he took up but on the pitch it doesn''t show.

Finally has also been seriously backed in terms of money- so far he''s spent...

£10m on Klose

£8m on Naismith

£8m on Brady

£8m on Pritchard

£5m on Nelson

...and in total spent well over £40m in his time here.

He''s had time and money to sort our obvious defensive issues and has failed miserably. It amazes me to look through the transfers since Neil arrived and see we''ve only signed two defenders permanently in this time. To put that in to context we''ve signed eight midfielders and three goalkeepers in that period!

I''m all for sticking with a manager if I can see progress- yet all I can see this season is regression.

[Jim Smith 2,610]

[quote user="lake district canary"].....it''s now. A difficult season up to now, defending as a team proving difficult, but also near the top most of it and still in striking distance of the top.

So for me the board has to stay strong, not get carried away with the hype and nonsense spouted on social media - and stick with the manager through thick and thin.

I don''t believe for one minute that the crowd should be allowed to influence the board. The board has to be strong, hold their nerve and allow AN to work through the problems - even if the crowd "turns".

We lost out on several managers who could have been long term managers for us - Lambert, who walked. Hughton, who couldn''t get things right in the prem, but would have been a good long term choice if he had been appointed when we were in the championship - and now we come to AN who is another good candidate for a long term manager. We simply have to stick with him, even if things get very rough. The alternative is just more and more short termism which ultimately leads to more instability as a club.

It''s time to let a manager have the reins and see through a period where we can build in the youngsters, develop the team and look more long term. AN is that man and we musn''t let him go just because things have got difficult.

The board tried to stay strong and keep Hughton, but lost their nerve at the wrong moment. I do hope they will have learned from that and stay strong this time. Getting rid of someone like AN would be folly - we need someone to be the Wenger or Fergy for us - or like Dyche at Burnley. AN is that man.[/quote]

I can only assume you are fishing for a reaction lakey. Why would a rubbish manager with no tactical acumen or ability to read a game and who has assembled an imbalanced squad be a good candidate for king term manager? Unless you mean for the lower leagues where we will inevitably be if he stays in place long term?

[Scot-e-dog 34]

[quote user="king canary"]The idea of a ''long term'' manager at this level is a bit of a myth- generally managers either do well enough to get us promoted or underachieve and get sacked. When the minimum expectation is promotion there is not much wiggle room.

Also Neil has had nearly two years here and four transfer windows to make this squad his own, yet can we honestly say we''ve improved? On paper this squad is stronger than the one he took up but on the pitch it doesn''t show.

Finally has also been seriously backed in terms of money- so far he''s spent...

£10m on Klose

£8m on Naismith

£8m on Brady

£8m on Pritchard

£5m on Nelson

...and in total spent well over £40m in his time here.

He''s had time and money to sort our obvious defensive issues and has failed miserably. It amazes me to look through the transfers since Neil arrived and see we''ve only signed two defenders permanently in this time. To put that in to context we''ve signed eight midfielders and three goalkeepers in that period!

I''m all for sticking with a manager if I can see progress- yet all I can see this season is regression.[/quote]

Not forgetting that, despite having this wealth of midfielders on our books, our buys have been so imbalanced that now we have a few injuries, we still cannot put out a well constructed midfield.

[93vintage 16]

[quote user="Parma Hams gone mouldy"]To some degree the answer to stick or twist lays in the hoary old chestnut question of what constitutes reasonable expectations.

As every good businessman knows, perfection is not on offer. 7/10 is frustrating after a period, though it represents great success if alternative strategies reach no higher than 5/10. This is a hard position to defend or prove and ''keeping on, keeping on'' is not testosterone sexy.

....History may point to the future...

Alex Neil came in at a relatively benign time for a new manager, he himself stated that one would usually expect to inherit a team in a much worse initial state than he did.

As a club our recent events and successes have been somewhat against the grain of our historical performance norms. Multiple promotions to the top league, Play off victories, staying up in consecutive seasons, enormous financial outlay on the most expensive squad ever assembled. A recent game saw us with £30m worth of talent on the bench...in the Championship.

We should assess Neil in the light of Managers within this recent historical context. How we got here, what success we had and perhaps why.

Lambert is the most heralded - and rightly so - however in the wonderful whirlwind there are structural elements and particularly favourable circumstance that are overlooked.

Just as Neil pointed out that he inherited a good situation from a Managerial perspective, so did Lambert.

The club had been through an extraordinary blood-letting period prior to Lambert''s arrival. Due to severe financial constraints, a Doncaster-inspired policy of reducing fixed costs by employing huge, regular swathes of loanees had seen the club in a position with very few senior players on the books. The extended grind of surviving repeatedly in the lower reaches of the Championship had sucked much of the quality and unity out of the playing resources to the point that League One relegation was almost cathartic.

Lambert started with an almost blank canvas in Management terms, an almost unique position of being able to entirely reshape the playing squad in his own image with his own vision, without any of the deadwood normally associated with failed regimes. It is his deadwood that kills modern clubs and binds the hands of many a manager, often spreading assorted viruses and infecting good new work that may be done.

Lambert built well, with young, hungry, impressionable players that owed him their chance and who grew together. This is very, very much more difficult in reverse. Retaining good players who have come down a level, re-motivating, setting new goals and creating inspiration after failure.

In this context - and at the tail-end of the Lambert upward-trajectory comet - Hughton did very well to drag out the momentum after the peak of the players'' abilities had been reached. Survival a second year was a good achievement. His somewhat defensive approach must be seen in this light. It arguably suited his natural proclivities, but defensiveness was (and is) the the most controllable coaching refuge available to the inferior.

Neil Adams is a good man who injected life and love back into the stands and provided the psychological firebreak transition from the negative death-spiral to attacking, Norwich-way football.

This firebreak transition is key to our perspective on how Alex Neil is performing.

We are a weak team in the Premier League. We will lose a lot of games. Unfortunately we will lose games when we don''t do our best, but crucially - from a coaching perspective - we will also lose when we do do our best.

The enormous changes that have occurred in the Premier League due to high finance simply cannot be ignored here. As we have identified repeatedly in the Masterclasses, you can now easily find yourself oxymoronically as a club having spent tens of millions of pounds on players that are suited to the Premier League, but conversely relatively ineffective in the rough-and-tumble of the Championship. Some of the skills you need for the Championship are redundant in the Premier League and skills that are pre-requisite (and very expensive) for the Premier League are of no great value in the Championship. Ally this to the fact that having been relegated you are de-facto used to losing, plus you will have players that are psychologically despondent at being out of the limelight and who may well realise that despite dropping a level that their style is not going to shine in the Championship and you have a toxic mix.

Further to the Masterclasses, this is where the difference between good players and ''weapons'' becomes most stark.

Simply ''being better'' than the opposition is a difficult tactic now at along levels. Clubs are more tactically advanced and spiking tactics are effective against teams trying to be better (typically opening the spaces rather than closing them, coming out of structural shape to repeatedly create chances and score goals).

Those of you who have repeatedly offered that you would be happy ''if we just went after teams'' and ''played on the front foot'' should review that statement. You actually have to be a great deal better than the opposition for that to work and you may well still lose if they have a Defoe/Crouch/Pedersen weapon to hand.

Clubs in Norwich''s position should buy weapons upon promotion, not good players.

So, Alex Neil.

Building a structure, a philosophy though a club, from youth to first team, with coaches all of of a mindset, with a firm conflation with the nature of the club itself and its soul is brilliant and should be aimed for and implemented root-and-branch at Norwich City.

However the actualite'' of English football, the schizophrenic nature of haves and have nots, the impact financially, psychologically, football-technically and structurally of yo-going between the top two tiers may well mean that sometimes the football equivalent of ''turning it off and turning it on again'' is a necessary course of action.

Having invested heavily in the education of Alex Neil it would a philosophical climbdown to remove him from his post - particularly with the club in the play off positions. However starting slowly and accelerating to this position would have inevitably been treated differently to the current poor run which sees a somewhat autistic repetitiveness to events, approaches and remedies.

Perhaps the Spanish have it right. Change for change''s sake is necessary to cauterise old wounds and reset the success button.

...but aren''t we actually quite successful?

Parma[/quote]The problems are many. We''re aiming for results instead of quality. We''ve bought too many older players. We''re not playing to our traditional style as originally envisaged by McNally.You could perhaps say that board and manager haven''t looked to the long term, and what we''re seeing is the fire dying out.I''ve been very pro Alex Neil, but we''re back to square one with a team that can''t pass or retain possession and is playing to naive tactics. But to be fair, he''s working within a flawed system that''s not of his making.To halt the decline there needs to be a reorganisation within the club and a proper plan. The annual report revealed that the board doesn''t have any real strategy, certainly not a cohesive one.

[Lessingham Canary 108]

93 Vintage wrote;

I''ve been very pro Alex Neil, but we''re back to square one with a team that can''t pass or retain possession and is playing to naive tactics. But to be fair, he''s working within a flawed system that''s not of his making.

To halt the decline there needs to be a reorganisation within the club and a proper plan. The annual report revealed that the board doesn''t have any real strategy, certainly not a cohesive one.

Add to that we have splits within the squad, players are resentful of others over wages, resentful of the manager for allowing it to happen, i would suggest these are of the managers making. I have had very hopes that Alex would prove to be a really successful manager over a long period, in my working life if someone doesn''t want to work with you, get rid, don''t money at them to stay.

The manager is responsible for creating the environment for players to thrive and flourish, and not keep wheeling out players to the media to reel off cliche after cliche to try and convince the outside world that all is well when its not. somehow i think McNally would have made moves to deal with that, for some reason the club is in denial.

[GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary 2,035]

time''s up already and should have been sacked by now.

The only reason why he probably won''t after yesterday is the alibi provided by the fact that we had 10 men for 89 mins.

Lose next week at Derby and that''s 5 defeats in a row ....6 if you chuck in the League Cup defeat at Leeds.

5 defeats in a row is barely acceptable in the Premier League, but in this league is quite blatantly unforgivable (4 is ,in my opinion).

If you were told at the start of the season that we would go through a spell of losing 5 in a row during the season with our squad, what would your reaction to Alex Neil be??.

I don''t think I recall any manager hauling it back after the fans have turned and the players have stopped working for him....he''s tried sticking with the side and has now tried changing half of it.....I just dont envisage a way back for him.

.

The positive thing is that I still think the league situation is retrievable but we must act NOW.

Newcastle will run away with this, but when you look around at what else is up there, Reading are now third, Huddersfield are on almost as bad a run as us and are still up there.....it really wouldnt take us getting on a huge run of winning games to getting back up there, but its not going to happen with this manager.

We need an Alex Neil of 2 seasons ago to come in now ,in similar circumstances to that which he arrived in galvanising a good squad of underperforming players

[Bagster 101]

If I see things correctly I think Delia knows we cant have a Newcastle model ect so the idea in investing in the academy and in young players is the right one.

I can understand her wanting a young manager that stays for a long time to help build that philosophy but I just don''t feel Alex is the right man, his substitutions show that he has lost his confidence and in sport confidence is everything.

There are three methods of utilising the parachute payments retaining as many of your players is one, doing a Newcastle and just retaining a few and then build a championship side is another, the last one and the one I see fitting with Norwich City is to invest in youth build a side over two or three years that could actually compete in the premiership once we got there.

Now I like the youth model and to be honest I would rather have this than a foreign billionaire who doesnt give two shits about the club but I feel we need a name someone who can attract the youth. The very big clubs have loads of youth players that they buy up and loan out. I think if we had name that excites them with a philosophy of actually playing them then there is an opertunity of attracting them to us over say the likes of Chelsea.

This is what I would like to see but unfortunately I don''t think Alex is the right man, maybe the board will give him the time to prove me wrong..but I hope not

[Mello Yello 2,572]

Well in my personal opinion, the rot starts at the TOP......

[Indy 3,471]

I love it, LDC on his normal wind up........

The guys spent more money than Hughton, doesn''t play 25million pounds worth of his players, signed Andrue for a million, did he actually play a senior game for us? His win ratio since promotion is as bad as Adams and he''s lost as a tactical manager having no man management skills as lot of players want out.

I agree AN now reflects the clubs set up, comfortable to tread water were we are, stagnation in the championship is regarded as success by our pensioners.

[93vintage 16]

[quote user="Lessingham Canary"][quote user="93 Vintage"]I''ve been very pro Alex Neil, but we''re back to square one with a team that can''t pass or retain possession and is playing to naive tactics. But to be fair, he''s working within a flawed system that''s not of his making.

To halt the decline there needs to be a reorganisation within the club and a proper plan. The annual report revealed that the board doesn''t have any real strategy, certainly not a cohesive one.[/quote]Add to that we have splits within the squad, players are resentful of others over wages, resentful of the manager for allowing it to happen, i would suggest these are of the managers making. I have had very hopes that Alex would prove to be a really successful manager over a long period, in my working life if someone doesn''t want to work with you, get rid, don''t money at them to stay.

The manager is responsible for creating the environment for players to thrive and flourish, and not keep wheeling out players to the media to reel off cliche after cliche to try and convince the outside world that all is well when its not. somehow i think McNally would have made moves to deal with that, for some reason the club is in denial.[/quote]I think Alex Neil''s inexperience is showing here.Regarding my point about his aiming for success over quality, I think AN has gambled a lot on buying older players like Naismith and trying to keep the squad together at the expense of harmony over wages etc. What he''s tried to do hasn''t necessarily been for the club''s long term good.Despite the club pledging a large degree of loyalty, he''s not used this to build. Instead he''s gambled, it''s gone wrong and there is friction amongst players which he doesn''t have experience in handling. We''re keeping a few players here against their will because the cupboard is relatively bare in terms of younger deputies able to step up.Hindsight is wonderful, but he should have perhaps played the percentages and not gone overboard in buying (or getting in loanees) for the short term when we got promoted, especially when we had a squad that was already in need of freshening up with the next generation of Howsons, Ruddys and Martins.The board (and football board) could have played a role in guiding AN, but they didn''t because they didn''t have a strategy and left most of the decisions up to AN and his backroom team.

[sonyc 6,145]

The board need to be business-like. Simple as. It''s a results business. The team and manager are paid handsomely. This is not a sentimental play thing. It''s a massive business. Results are not right. He has had plenty of time. He has been invested in plenty. He was great for 3/4 of a year. He isn''t any more. He is not the worst ever but he has had his time. Simply, let''s move on and give the paying fans what they want. Which is clear.