Hindsight is a wonderful thing...

It's been such a depressing season that I haven't been bothered to revisit this blog until now. But checking out the last entry, it's striking just how much hasn't changed, even though we're another manager and an entire squad down the line.

What's more surprising is that even though, by hook or by crook, Roeder tried to dissolve the Doherty-Shackell partnership, it's somehow re-emerged. It's like a turd in the sea that won't float away. 

Roeder saw the problem at centre-back and I honestly believe that without injuries to Stefanovic and Kennedy (who probably would have stayed the season), we'd be fifteen points better off by now and still harboring fanciful ideas of a late surge for the play-offs. But somehow fate once again transpired against us, and Roeder's inability to to keep his friends close and enemies even closer finally did for what started as such a promising relationship. 

One question arose during the whole Roeder v The Fans saga: why didn't he just apologise? And where was the tough chairman taking him to task? A simple, humble apology would have wiped the slate clean with all but the most curmudgeonly (mostly residing in the Pink'un Care Home, who seem to take these things extremely personally), but it was beyond him. Maybe it never even occurred to him. Whatever it was, his persecution complex got in the way and he alone was responsible for talking his way out of possibly the best job he may ever have had.

So, like a shaggy old Saint Bernard you just don't want to put down, Gary Doherty is back in the starting line-up along with his obedient junior, who's found his way home after escaping through a whole under the fence last summer. If you're looking for commitment, look no further, but the reservations about those two remain identical to the post below.

Doherty is actually getting better - we should remember this is really only his third full season as a centre-back - but his lack of pace will always be exposed and if he is the best we can hope for then we we're going down.

But you know all this. You saw it coming. You held onto the hope for as long as you could, and now it's fading rapidly, being replaced with the dreadful thought that you might actually want to give up watching Norwich - at least for a little while.

Should we lose today against Coventry - and I will eat my hat if we don't - then we can be sure of third tier football next season. All the clubs around us should lose today, and we won't get another chance. And if we lose today, I'm going to give up my season ticket and have a couple of years of trying to find something else to do on a Saturday afternoon. Living in Norwich, that doesn't leave me with a lot of options, but it's for the best. 

It's too depressing living with fading hope and knowing your expectations will generally be realised. Because the only expectations we have these days are that we'll play some nice football, give away a soft goal and ultimately be frustrated by a combination of panicky shooting and bad refereeing. It's all so bloody predictable yet still we turn up. 

But maybe not for much longer.

Hooray for Hillsborough

If the farcical 4-1 loss at Hillsborough served to teach us anything about what's happened at our club since promotion to the Premiership, it's this:

1) We cannot go another summer without replacing at least one of our centre backs with someone who has presence and experience.

2) Thanking a 39 year old - great (if brief) servant that he has been - for keeping his ageing legs going so our heads remained above water is a measure of how low our ambitions tumbled after only 18 months of relegation.

3) The number of thousands we take to away games directly correlates with how many goals we concede. 6000 at Fulham? 6-0. 4000 at Wednesday? 4-1. 3000-4000 at Selhurst? Take your pick, there's plenty of thrashings to choose from.

I gave up on this sorry-assed season sometime ago, but it kept coming back to bite me. Now it's truly over I'm quite glad we took a beating yesterday. It allows Roeder to give the squad a long, hard look and it's encouraging to hear what he feels the squad doesn't need next season. 

I for one am fed up with seeing Shackell, Doc and Otsemebor look around for someone to blame when their poor marking and lack of communication has led to another softly conceded goal. Martin Taylor or someone of equal stature needs to replace Doherty immediately. Shackell should remain on the bench until he can prove he can concentrate for 90 minutes. Otsemebor defies logic - he has considerable skills going forward but it is wrong that a man so obviously gifted has not been educated in the simple art of defending, especially considering he is not new to the game. 

Time and again we've heard the words 'if only we'd taken our chances'. That's all very well, but in this strangest of strange seasons, if we'd conceded none of the silly goals that we have, we'd be equally in with a chance of the play-offs. Yes, we've a better defensive record than last year but it's all relative.  

My theory is that we'd be more relaxed in front of goal of we knew our defence weren't about to throw the game at any given moment. That can't be good for the likes of Cureton, who seemed to be so hell-bent on making up for the mistakes at the the back that he started making his own mistakes up front.

What utterly defies logic and common sense is that not one manager before Roeder saw a problem at centre back. It's the foundation of a good team, and we haven't had one since promotion. We can blame the board all we like but it is a manager thing, nothing more. Besides, we would hate it if our board started insisting on what players to bring in. 

The last five seasons have been a portent for what was coming. Promotion year was all about showing we had the teeth to compete. We got it right. Our year in the Premier League should have been the same, but we misjudged it completely, stuck somewhere in between prudence and ambition, ending up with a 4ft has-been from Bolton at centre back and waiting until Christmas to show we actually wanted to stay in that league.

The following seasons were just fire-fighting, money-saving operations that went horribly wrong. It gave no-one, in or outside the club, the impression that we were a team about to go places. Spending £3m on Earnshaw was a desperate bid to appease the fans, and while his goals were welcome, asking him to play with players worth a fraction of his value just highlighted our failings on and off the pitch.

This season had potential, and Peter Grant has received a lot of unfair criticism when it is conveniently forgotten that our first-team coach walked out on him at the start of the season. We then proceeded to play like a team without a coach, and the rest is history.

So big decisions need to be made. Gary Doherty must go. He symbolises most of what has been wrong: nice bloke, top effort, can't quite cut it. Huckerby must go. It's a shame but we need to move on, and I'm afraid he needs to bear some of the responsibility for this season. Complaining about the squad was the single worst thing he could have done, and whether he was right or not, when your best player publicly says the rest of you are shit, it can't be all that motivating. 

The board must squeeze money from every orifice to help Roeder get what he wants. My guess is that we'll have an interesting mix of youth and experience next year. As we've seen at other clubs, Roeder doesn't handle big names too well but neither do Norwich. So solid players like Martin Taylor need to be brought in alongside youngsters who are hungry. Bertrand and Evans have been superb this season, and if Roeder can keep bringing in that kind of kid, we're in for an exciting time.

Fotheringham must be the fulcrum of everything we do. He will be a superb player if we get promoted, with a bit more time and space in the Premier allowing his game to really flourish. For now though, we must be thankful that he has a tough side to his game that doesn't allow him to be bullied in this league. If Lee Clark can teach him the value of more goals, we will really be on to a winner.

So it's a summer of symbolism. I just hope that people realise it may take another season to really get ourselves sorted. That won't cut any ice with the strait-jacketed residents at the Pink'un hospital - they'll be posting furious messages blaming their nemesis Delia if we fail to pick up anything less than maximum points in August - but if we don't look like we mean business over the summer, the board can wave goodbye to goodwill from any fans. 

Anyway, a nod to Dion: You stood as a shining beacon of professionalism when all around you were falling apart but frankly, we should never have got ourselves into the position where we needed your help in the first place. But thanks anyway - we couldn't have stayed up without you.

Another rum week up Carrow Road

I can't work it out, I really can't. Some City fans seem to love the fact that we're in a relegation scrap again. Why? 'Cos they LOVE THE MISERY.

Now I will be so humble as to say that at least our league position makes the home game against Col U a game worth watching, but I can't say I'm revelling in the possibility that we might be relegated. Some fans seem to think it'll be the best thing for us, though. They truly believe that relegation will force Delia to sell up and that some sugar daddy will come dancing over the horizon, whisk us off our feet and plant us firmly in the Premier League.

Or the more realistic of us believe the following could happen:

We get relegated, Delia is forced out by the sheer nastiness of the idiots who don't realise that it's her money that's kept us out of League One for so long, we realise that there really isn't anyone else interested in buying the club and we end up the team that everyone wants to beat in that league for years and years until we become another non-entity like Notts Forest.

But some fans just love it. Take the turgid draw at home in the cup against Bury; it was amidst our splendid 13 game unbeaten run and we had a bit of a bad one. But to listen to many of the fans in that day, we'd been playing like that all season. Of course, that's how we started the season but by the time Bury rolled into town, we'd been playing expansive, adventurous football for a while under Roeder and this was just a blip. But it was almost like some fans had been desperate to see us play badly. It took a full ten minutes for the old knacker in front of me to start whingeing, loudly, at the strikers and he didn't stop until his enormous wife told him to sit down well into the second half.

For a perfect example of this, you only have to look at Norwich's 'Manic Depressive and Dillusional Football Self-Help Group' website, or the 'Pink'un' message board as it's sometimes known. Locked away in their padded cells, with only each other to communicate with, you'll notice the residents are convinced we are either going to be promoted and in the champions league within a year, or that Delia is Satan's mother and Neil Doncaster the true leader of Al Qaeda, both of whom are conspiring to put NCFC into the Ridgeons League (south) at the earliest possible opportunity while draining blood from the throats of past players and laughing, LAUGHING at how we the fans are so easily letting them get away with their evil plan.

I for one would be most interested to learn if there ever has been a chairman of a football club who really has wanted to destroy everything he or she owned. It would make a fascinating television documentary. Ridsdale did a good job of convincing us that this was his intention at Leeds (not that anyone outside of Leeds really minded), and the Luton board that spectacularly undermined all Mike Newell's good work have just admitted several charges of dodgy-doings, but it would take some 'cohones' to actually stand up and say, 'yep, that was my intention all along.'

Delia, somehow, just doesn't seem that kind of person. That may come as a surprise to the permanent residents of the Pink'un hospital, but it's well known that most of them never actually go to Carrow Road. Besides, if you have been to Carrow Road recently, you'll have generally enjoyed the football.

Which makes it a shame we're in a bit of a pickle, because you can't help admire Glenn's approach to how he wants the game played. In another season, Jamie Cureton would have scored at least half the sitters he's missed this year and be top of the charts again, and we'd be tickling Ipswich's ribs as we head for the home straight. As it is, none of our strikers can score and our defenders have remembered how to panic. I'm just glad we'll have the steadying influence of Gary Doherty back this weekend. Did I really just say that? Yes, I did, and that's testament to Mr Roeder's abilities as a coach: that the man who only a few months ago was derided as being responsible for all our ills on the pitch has become something of a rock. That's certainly annoyed the bloke behind me (a scrap metal 'collector', if ever I've seen one), who revelled in shouting 'donkey' every time the Doc went near the ball. That's a loyal fan, eh?

So this weekend's game suddenly becomes a 'biggy', just when we thought the only 'biggy' left was trying to ruin Ipswich's play off hopes up Portaloo Road in April. If we can keep Daryl Russell on the field for 90 minutes (especially as his replacement may not be, er, 'available' this weekend) and actually score - and we've just signed one Maceo Rigters from Blackburn, who could be a good signing if reports are correct - we'll be just fine.

The only fear is how many minutes it will take the less patient to get on his and the team's backs at Carrow Road on Saturday.