Michael Bailey said something very similar in his post-match report; that fans shouldn't expect results to suddenly improve if Dean Smith is sacked because the problems run much deeper.
https://www.alongcomenorwich.com/articles/the-acn-match-review-blackburn-h/ Good take on Smith's comments from ACN.
Wow, this is good, well worth reading. Well-written, with a barely controlled anger and disappointment between the words, and laying the blame where it deserves to be.
Smith should be sacked . The disdain he has for the fans is unforgivable, in his mind the fans venting their frustration causes the poor performances . We lost again because the plebs didn't turn up and those that did , weren't clapping loud enough. I fully agree with the writer , the club wants us to buy their merchandise buy the tickets and sit there smiling like mental patients for 90 minutes . We went from a family club to a dictatorship where Smith and Webber watch on from their ivory tower with no accountability, "Ignore the noise " Webber says , the noise being reality. If they could they would probably ban people for booing. When a manager says , ""I'm glad we're playing away next game " kind of proves he's lost the fans and sees us as a contemptible annoyance. I don't have any desire to go anywhere near Carrow Road until he's gone and I don't particularly care when we lose anymore, it's expected that they'll play **** and occasionally we'll nick an ugly win . Dean Smith is like one of these talentless arrogant chefs serving up Gordon Ramsey a bowl of brown slop , then throws his apron off and launches his ladle at the wall when the food is returned as the restaurant haemorrhages money with empty seats every weekend. At this point I would rather Delia sold us to the syndicate of Jewish businessmen that run the Rounders franchise in America and sack Webber and all the other people in charge of running this **** show.. Watching Pukki wrestling with the keeper as he tried to waste even more time trampling all over the ball boy pretty much summed up the game , 4 of the 6 minutes of injury time were wasted squabbling with each other , zero passion in the previous 90 .
Agree. I've been dubious about Webber for some time, but I'm also not wishing we had Farke back as his football was great in the Championship, but never had a chance in the PL. He needed a bigger, richer club to make it work and he has that now. I believed in Webber's project up until the disastrous second attempt at the PL when the weaknesses in our recruitment became glaringly obvious. Rashica was happy to desert Bremen after their relegation and then do the same when we went down. Lees-Melou was much the same. Sargent gave glimpses of potential which have now come good and Gunn was recruited for the future which has now arrived and yet we're still struggling. The project is falling apart, again. The switch to Smith went against everything Webber had previously preached except the bit about possession football, which we now achieve by kicking the ball around our back line seemingly endlessly. Webber's desire to climb mountains seems to have replaced making the project succeed. It isn't about us - it's about him. The ACN article quotes Smith and then says it all: “The narrative has been set, a lot of them have been waiting for this to happen or wanted it to. Fortunately, our next game is away from home. You feel like we have to score two very quick goals at home to get people on our side.” "Is there any other club where a manager could say this and still have job security? I doubt it but at Norwich, this attitude has become embedded in the club culture. It used to be something they kept private, Stuart Webber’s disdain for the supporters something that was assumed rather than stated."
Is he wrong for feeling it or saying it Gozo? I almost have to agree with him in a way. Those that didn’t want Farke sacked have never given him a chance or got behind him. Others for some reason just turned their nose up at him despite his record at other teams because he wasn’t a left field appointment. Is he wrong in what he says when for the last few months I’ve seen Norwich fans wishing Norwich to lose because it would be a step closer to Smith getting sacked. It’s easy to blame others - the players, the manager, the board, the owners, Webber but never the “supporters” who aren’t supporting the team and lifting the players on match days. The away support has been far better than that of the home. We have become entitled, for the good of the season unfortunately Smith has to go now because the fans won’t change their minds now
You were actually responding to a post by Rick, not me, Suffolk, but I guess I have been the most outspoken of the anti-Smith faction on this site, and from an early date, so it's understandable. I don't accept that there was a 'narrative' against him by the fans. When I was railing against him on here towards the end of last season, I was very much in a small minority, both on here and in the wider media. The general feeling - I would estimate at least 80% on social media sites - seemed to be that he deserved time because he had inherited an awful squad following Webber's woeful recruitment and because he didn't 'have his own players'. It is only over the months since then that I have seen a gradual movement of fans towards my position until it finally seems to have become an avalanche. I don't think that expecting your team to play a decent level of football when your individual players are generally at a higher level than most of their opponents is being entitled. I don't think giving him more than one year before refusing to put up with the same dross week after week is being entitled. Smith has failed, and I think his blaming the fans for that failure is reprehensible and self-serving, but he'll probably get away with it, at least in the immediate term, because his boss Webber obviously shares his low opinion of them.
I have been giving Smith the benefit of doubt throughout this season. The club spent a lot of money taking the players to Tampa for the benefit of warm weather training but since returning the play on display has been even worse and Smith needs to acknowledge that rather than shifting the blame to the fans. The home loss to Boro was abject. The ugly win at Swansea produced points but the play was turgid in the extreme and it became even worse yesterday. I thought we were making progress with the diamond formation a few weeks back, but that seems to have faded into poor passing, disjointed play, and an almost complete lack of attacking play. That's where the problem lies and it needs addressing.
I didn’t want Farke sacked, but I was delighted with Smith’s appointment. I thought it was vindicated with those early results, brief as they were. I thought there were moments in the Premier League where I could see he was improving the solidity - he had a plan, it could work, and it was a reasonable shot (if still a long one) at success. But I think he lost faith, or desire. I don’t know. Round about February he seemed to lose all willpower. Then he had the Summer and a recruitment window, pre-Season and the chance to mould the squad - IMO he didn’t take it. He’s not a bad manager, by any stretch, he’s a very good one I think. But he’s inflexible, one trick (a good one) but our squad has been built for too long on managers who go for something different. I think Smith had lost faith in his own ability with our squad long ago, and he’s not able, or willing, to find a different way. So he’s just tried the same static way over and over again; sometimes it’s worked because it is a good method, but with our squad it’s never going to work every time. And he pretty much lost the fans a couple of months ago, now it looks like he’s lost the players. So the writing is on the wall. I think we should have stuck with Farke a lot longer - February, March etc. Then appointed Smith.
I didn't want Farke sacked but our Premier league form and winless goalless runs were record breaking, I wasn't thrilled with Smith's appointment but happy to get behind him like any other of our managers . The team doesn't keep playing badly and losing at home because I don't believe in Smith hard enough. He's not Jesus or Santa he's a bang average coach that can't get this squad of players (the most expensive on paper) for this league to work as a cohesive winning unit . Blaming the fans for the depressing last 13 months with him in charge is pathetic. It's a chicken and egg situation, is it the poor performances and results creating a toxic environment? Or the horrible nasty fans that never gave Smith a chance ? We aren't that fussy , we can take defeats but disjointed lacklustre displays with dumb mistakes and poor passing week in week out doesn't paper over the few minutes of decent play . Blackburn's squad cost £63m ours is £95m including 2 of out most expensive signings Tzolis, Rashica away on loan as well as Placheta and Cantwell probably getting sold for peanuts after being valued at £20m 2 seasons ago . We brought back Hernandez and Hugill 2 players deemed not good enough and sent our expensive players out . Is Hernandez better than the £26m worth of wingers sent out on loan? If so our recruitment was also a complete **** up .
"Well here's a take from a fan of another club. After relegations from the prem you've always walked the championship, suddenly you're not having it quite your own way, shock! horror! You're only 5th!!! You really don't know how lucky you are." (Twitter post replying to Nick Mashiter.)
What club do they follow ? Most clubs would probably be happy with 5th place but not if they had a squad that cost as much as ours . Why be content with 5th ? Anything above bottom 3 would be great for some teams . What a pointless statement. Failure to get promoted with parachute payments running out and we will need to sell anyone half decent to balance the books or risk going bust again, undoing all years of hard work to get to where we are now. I still believe we have good enough players (minus a Skipp replacement that never arrived ) to comfortably get promoted, the tactics and team selection simply isn't working.
Apologies Gozo, I think there had been a few comments along the same kind of lines I just replied to the last one and yours was the last name I must have looked at. I have disagree on the 'narrative' against him, I recall a reasonable number not being happy with his appointment because they wanted Lampard or the Danish guy - a proven English manager was seen as a boring move and the wrong one because he couldn't have been Webbers first choice when he was looking to sack Farke - which is a perfectly justified opinion, but they then never backed the decision. I personally thought he was one of the most qualified candidates that we could attract and have been hoping it would work out ever since. When he is sacked and a new manager comes in unfortunately I don't think anyone will see what they want to out of this team. The spark in the Farke era was Buendia and he is nigh on impossible to replace, as I've said before just look at our record without him under Farke's entire tenure. One thing that is really grating me recently is DS unwillingness to drop Pukki, Sargent will offer more up front especially in terms of linking with the midfield and has shown he is just as good at scoring this season.
As I said above, I wasn't against Smith being appointed as I thought he could bring some pragmatism to a squad trying to play a style of football which was above their skill level. He did solidify the defence, which made us more balanced, but at some cost to the attacking play. He has tried to correct this by moving beyond his beloved 4-3-3 to the diamond and a 4-3-2-1 which I thought was a positive, but the players seem to be struggling to create decent chances. Our 19 chances produced 4 shots on target, none of which really stretched their keeper.
During the interview process Dean Smith would have been asked if he believes he can keep this group of players up, failing that get them playing well in the Championship and gaining promotion. He failed to keep us up , which was a near impossible task most of us gave him a clean slate to instill his style this season, but the team have looked horrible all season. Performances and results get supporters on board it doesn't matter how much of a great guy Smith might be , he serves up horrible ugly Performances even when they win . If he can't get us going at Championship level as well as going down without a fight last season , I'm not sure that he has a leg to stand on .
We are 4th in the league for shots per game, and 3rd for shots on target per game (Sheffield and Burnley are the only teams above us for SOT, in Burnley's case, by only 0.1 per game). Re. Smith's comments about the fan reaction on Saturday, it doesn't take a lot of brain to distinguish between "blaming the fans for the poor performance" and "when things aren't going well on the pitch, that's the time when players most need support from the fans". Yet that distinction is apparently beyond many of our "fans" while, in many cases, it is simply being wilfully ignored because of the underlying agenda.
Things haven't gone well on the pitch since Smith took over , if anything they are getting worse . Hence the empty seats and booing , fans don't boo great performances to annoy the manager. The agenda being you will never accept that you were wrong to want Farke sacked in hindsight and wrong about Smith being able to introduce a style of play that will keep us in the Premier league
