As did the two ahead of us so doubly important to keep in touch. As Mike indicated, it’s way too early to presume the gap to the top two is too big. Good to see Dan James getting a brace, he does not score enough and as for Rutter - he has his head up at last and has been a revelation.
Positive signs - just hope Rodon is ok.
@dave-marshall @mikehughescq you’re right there has been a lot of talk around Ipswich but I think it’s justified to be fair…
Since their manager took over…
Long way to go but if I was a fan, I’d be very excited.
Fortunately I have friends in North Yorkshire so an overnight stay.
It was needed after the way Norwich played, yet again.
Very impressed with the stadium of light.
The bad dream continues.
If Delia doesn’t agree a sale to Attanasio now we are relegated.
Need to bring Knapper in now, if we can, so he can appoint a new coach because we’re looking more disorganised by the game.
Bad dream is rapidly assuming nightmare status.
I have only seen ITVs Football League highlights & YouTube vids. this season & am seriously alarmed by the lack of interest & effort that most of our players, particularly the defenders, are putting in at the moment. The majority, for whatever reason, just don’t seem to care.
Perhaps if the club refuses to pay them it may focus a few minds?
Major changes needed both on the pitch and in the boardroom to avert what is increasingly looking like a catastrophic campaign.
Looking very grim at the moment & my pre-season 10th to 16th place finish is looking wildly optimistic at present.
I do wonder how stuff like this persists. Nowadays there are enough books, interviews, videos to be reasonably confident that whilst you’ll have the odd player who thinks with their agents calculator the overwhelming majority always put in 100% effort and definitely care no matter what it looks like. The issue will be what they’re asked to do alongside other stuff like life.
Decent example would be the Bradford player who this season had taken weeks of battering from fans and media alike for looking disinterested and half-arsed. Sparky gets sacked and he comes alive. Gets asked what had changed and answers with one word. “Clarity.” “Each of us knows exactly what our job is now.”
I have made this observation before some while back but your fundamental issue with regard to your owners isn’t money. It’s appointing poor managers. You’ve not had a PL level manager since Martin O’Neill and nothing will change until you appoint someone like McKenna at Ipswich. Might be backed by big finance but in reality has only paid for 4 players in the last window and 2 of them aren’t in the team. He came cheap too. It’s not about having young players and free transfers. It’s about basic coaching.
It’s very easy to attack players but they’re only as good as their manager and the messages they’re getting. Wagner is a shambles in that respect and always has been. I’ve an ex staff member who is a Huddersfield fan. Loved their promotion but to this day will insist most of their fans had no idea how it happened; what formation they were playing etc. It seemed to happen despite him rather than because of him. After he left the locals quickly picked up just how disillusioned and confused the players were under him.
Importantly, you also have no idea what’s going on in the lives of players. Our fans have been slaughtering Ben Tozer as no longer league two level. Turns out he’s been carrying a knee injury and his father had died. He carried on playing.
Similarly they got on the back of a local kid, Jordan Davies, when the performances dried up but then attacked Parky for allegedly dropping him. His partner had a miscarriage.
Another player had a baby that was 16 weeks premature. Just carried on playing until his manager took him out of the firing line.
More recently our wing back took a battering. It was assumed he’d significant mental health issues; was imagining injury; wasn’t rated by the manager etc. All sorts of rumours. It was only last week on Welcome To Wrexham we learned that his brother had leukaemia and then his wife was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
When things go badly fans turn on whatever takes their fancy. They let their own biases and imaginations run riot. The truth is often more prosaic.
I’d have to disagree about money as it’s fundamentally essential to all successful teams in the top two tiers of football.
The reason for our plight is however twofold.
Firstly our owners don’t understand the game and have appointed poor advisers. This has resulted in disastrous transfer windows leading to our current financial plight.
Secondly they never possessed sufficient wealth in the first place to mount a reasonable challenge in the premiership as Forest have.
It’s a matter of time will tell but I’ll be surprised if Farke doesn’t eventually prove to be a premiership manager.
We’re talking about where you are now though not how you got there.
Right now your “plight” is because your manager is not very good. Watching your forwards you look a tad lightweight up front but not much. Your biggest problem appears to be two centre backs who have no idea how to play the role. The standing off and looking blankly at each other has been a consistent feature of your ITV4 appearances for weeks now. The owners cannot be blamed for that. If McKenna can coach two crap defenders into being really good defenders inside a few months down the road from you then the questions you need to be asking are not about money or ownership.
I’m going to be brutal here. Let’s look at your list of managers since O’Neill. List of Norwich City F.C. managers - Wikipedia
For all that you talk up the ifs and buts around Farke the reality is that since 1995 you haven’t had a single manager that any football fan would describe as a Premier League manager. Seriously, name them. Until you get someone of that standard no-one will shift you from where you are regardless of money. Ipswich did their research.
I think you have missed the point that clubs are run from the top down.
No matter how good the manager if the owners cannot provide the finance to acquire decent players the manager is stuffed.
If you look at our annual reports you will see that there has been minimum investment from our owners over the past twenty six years compared to clubs that have come from below us and our relatively successful. Manchester City were a league below us before finding better investment rather than outstanding managers until recent times.
You quote O’Neil which is interesting as he left Norwich due to a lack of investment by the owner and I can assure you Chase was the equal to Delia when it came to investment.
After twenty six years we are about to relegated with a huge debt which on any sane business approach should mean administration or new ownership capable of financing a refresh.
I would also query your judgment regarding managers as Farke as been relatively successful wherever he’s been. You only have to look at where Leeds are now and if properly funded he will prove the equal of O’Neil.
Feel free to question my judgement. That’s the nature of the internet. I’m happy to go on record and say that if Farke gets Leeds up he’ll be gone within two seasons at the very most. He’s not and never will be a Premier League manager. Bookmark this and let’s revisit. I’ve no problem with being wrong. That’s life. Genuinely think he may not last that long. Good coaches transcend their circumstances. He never has. I don’t mean they’re brilliantly successful. I mean you can see they’re operating at a level way beyond their circumstances. Farke is not that at all.
Moyes, O’Neill and Cooper especially spring to mind. For all the money he has at Forest Cooper got that job because the jobs he did at former clubs with no money/minimal investment showed what a great coach he is. Anyone who saw his mid table Swans team would instantly recognise someone doing incredible things. No-one has ever looked at Farke or indeed Wagner and thought that.
I don’t think any of us need telling how football clubs run. The reality though is that numerous clubs are now realising that the way to compete is to get competent coaches and improve what you have. McKenna cost Ipswich peanuts and is making them millions as I type.
Wagner is, approximately, four times as expensive and making you nothing. The fact your central two are so poor is not down to money. It’s poor tactics and coaching. If our back three stood off like your two most of our fans would describe that as schoolboy errors but I’d also look at why they’re repeatedly exposed. You can go out and buy “better” players but better players fail all the time. It’s about tactics and coaching as much as it is money. For every Van Dyke you get a Maguire.
I note that you’ve avoided the manager question. There’s not a one of them I would have had as a Wrexham manager even at non-league level. Most of them struggled at clubs two divisions below you. Several failed spectacularly at clubs above you. A proportion never managed anywhere else.
I doubt you’ll find anyone on this thread who would say otherwise in respect of their clubs. Wouldn’t touch them. They are the most awful motley list I’ve read in a long time. That isn’t money. That’s culture and mindset. “In order to succeed we have to do what the others do.” At best it’s naive. At worst, plain stupid.
You criticise me for wanting a change of owner, blaming poor appointments instead. I will happily agree with you regarding some of our woeful appointments but would ask who made those appointments in the first place? The owners.
Looking at Delia’s recruiting record over twenty six years with the likes of Roeder, Grant, Gunn etc I think the fans of Norwich are justified in asking for change.
Regarding Cooper I’ll agree he is a good coach but Farke matched him in the championship. Where Cooper succeeded was when he found an owner capable of backing him in the premiership. Farke has never received that privilege. He did orchestrate a win over Manchester City during one of our previous premiership appearances. Had he have been backed financially I’m sure we’d still be in the premier league. Unfortunately Delia refused to sell the club and at the next transfer window our sports director bought a number of duds.
Pep always speaks well of Farke and stated he admired him as a coach.
We’ll have to wait and see what happens at Leeds but given the same backing as Cooper I’m sure he’ll succeed. Look at his record in Germany with junior and senior sides and you’ll see he has competed at the higher levels.
Regarding Ipswich they are owned by a large pension fund that have settled the huge debts accrued over previous years through an arrangement with the previous owner which is what Norwich now require. I also hope we will replace our manager with a similar young coach who is eager to succeed.
Wagner following Dean Smith is enough for the most tolerant of fans.
I do love the “some” in woeful appointments. Care to name the ones who weren’t woeful apart from your dream boy?
Think you’ll find that a comprehensive review of your managerial appointments shows they had ownership approval but the former were only involved in recruitment in around three instances. Amusingly, Farke was one of them so if we were being scrupulously fair then a one on three hit rate is way better than most club owners.
That’s some spectacular misunderstanding right there.
Cooper wasn’t “backed” in the PL at all. He’s talked at one of our fan events and made it clear that he had literally no say over any of the players coming in. Name, age, position, nothing. He described waking up one morning to discover they’d signed three players that even he hadn’t heard of.
His achievement last year wasn’t because he was “backed”. It was because, having got them promotion on his terms, he was completely undermined by the owner at every turn and yet still somehow found a way to adapt what he had; coach them to be better; fit square pegs into round holes etc.
As soon as he got them out of a relegation place his owner, who continues to want an Ancelotti, Zidane type figure, publicly criticised him for “under-achieving” and started to make noises about replacing him quickly until there was a fans revolt. Even MotD talked at length about how ludicrous and damaging the lack of support from the owner was.
What he actually then did was show what a great coach he is.
This is all public domain stuff so I’ve no idea where on earth you’ve got the idea his owner backed him.
If you look at the players Forest have bought they are better quality than many promoted clubs have been able to afford.
To describe Farke as my dream boy demeans the argument.
Didn’t really matter did it. They gave him a wholly unbalanced squad. No point in having six players who can play at left back when you need a striker etc. Their survival depended wholly on Cooper knitting something out of nothing. He’s been quite open at his and our fan forums in saying he’d have been happier to have 7 or 8 players on free transfers who were his choice and in the right positions.
To be honest I have to. It’s not an argument I can take seriously to any degree. You persist in trying to use him as a kind of battering ram of if only scenarios. The reality is that given clear constraints Farke showed zero adaptability and persists in making the same mistakes everywhere he goes. Given utterly bizarre constraints Cooper was tactically inventive, practical and resourceful. One used everything in his toolkit whether it was the kind of team or football he wanted to see or not. The other pouted a bit about principles; refused to budge or show anything else and got relegated.
Farke is no more a Premier League standard manager than I am. You could give him £200m to spend and he still wouldn’t be.
Well it’s always a guess but if pushed I’d go for Anthony Barry or Jordan Hadaway.
Former already has a profile thanks to his spell at Chelsea under Tuchel but as a player he’s well versed in non-league and you get a sense that he could step in at any level above that and swim rather than sink. Has the personality to be someone who is much more than a coach. As ever, choose the wrong club and it could be over in a flash. He does have history in terms of his playing career of making decisions on limited information and not doing due diligence but all the signs are that he’s learned and is either going to stay as a coach or make the jump soon. Think he’s with Tuchel at Bayern at present and it could be a mistake to associate himself with one person so much but we’ll see.
Hadaway is Welsh and ludicrously young. Having watched a couple of matches in which he was coaching one of the teams - one a competitive match and one a training session - I was astonished. He really may be the next McKenna in the sense that, whilst nobody will appoint him at his current age, if he can have a spell as a coach at a decent size club and make a success of it he may well be ready to take the sort of step Mckenna has taken at an even younger age. What astonished me about him was his ability to have a complete lout of a lad and a poser singing from the same sheet in the same team. His sideline instructions were genuinely impressive.
Having committed myself we’ll doubtiess hear of neither ever again now 
I think £35 million with add ons for Gibbs-White and two or three other £20 million buys gave Cooper a big helping hand.
On a more equal footing in the championship Farke matched him.
MGW goals tally currently stands at… five. So yeah his record signing obviously went a long way to differentiating between the two managers. 
That’s at least one of the add ons not achieved for starters.
Notably he got player of the season according to their fans groups because his coach taught him to sacrifice certain strengths for the team in the short term. Any sign of Farke doing that when he got in the Prem? Any sign that he understood that the value of surviving one season would be so great for the club and his career that he needed to show his coaching skills and coach people to do things they themselves didn’t think possible? Not a bit of it.
You can hang Farke’s sheer ordinariness on Delia and co forever but it doesn’t wash and it never will. He’s at best a Championship manager and he always will be. People have limits to what they can achieve and, at minimum, you should have a sense of people trying to transcend them even if they fail. Norwich in the EPL had none of that. Everyone could see the weaknesses but he’d rather stand on MOTD shrugging about having them than looking at what he had and experimenting. Cooper dived in and went through high double figures in what had been dumped on him until he found something that worked. Money had bugger all to do with that. It was about competence and flexibility. A great coach versus someone with a vision of how football should be played but no ability to achieve that within constraints. Cooper will manage England. Farke will next manage somewhere that pays a lot of money but has poor standards. Saudi, Asia or perhaps further south.
Leeds fans no doubt quite like how things are going. If he gets them up let’s see how they fancy having a season like last years promotion winners are all having.
Nice comparison with our current manager. Parkinson has only failed at basket case clubs but the question when he joined us was whether he could adapt to the national league and handle having money for the first time. Reputationally his teams are dour and he’s intransigent. He showed he could do both. We spent well and could switch between grinding hoofball and Brazilian joy. I fully expect him to get us out of league two in the next three seasons. In league one he’ll need to rebuild and we’ll possibly need outside investment. I’ve no doubt both things can be achieved and Parky can get us into the Championship. Could he get us into the EPL? Again further outside investment needed but right now it’s an unknown. I suspect, but don’t know, that he could.
After that? Straight back down. He doesn’t have what it would then take. Nor does Farke.
Thanks very much Mike, for having given this the thought that you have.
It will be interesting to see how it goes for them both.
Having looked at this thread closely lately, I texted a great friend who is a staffer at Saints. Despite Saints being 4th in the Championship at the moment Ipswich and Leicester have already opened a serious gap. I asked him if we should be looking for the next Kieran McKenna?
His reply: Some clubs will already be looking for the next Russell Martin!
What can you do?! My friend is a club loyalist obviously. I would love to be proved wrong about Martin. But I feel Martin is wrong for all the reasons that Farke is wrong, as @mikehughescq has given above.
Anyway, Millwall away on Sat…