“Relegation is a fate worse than death”. Is it? Is it really? Well perhaps it is for the money men but for us fans relegation almost comes as a relief! We’ve been like a near-fatally wounded wolf (yeah yeah, I know – I could have chosen any animal), scrambling around in the snow, feeding off scraps and unable to put on enough weight to make it through to summer. As we know it’s the hope that kills us and although it would have been great to take it to the last day with our destiny still unknown, perhaps its for the best that we’ve been put out of our misery before it all becomes too much to take. There’s little doubt that the Premier League is the place to be – we should always want the best for the club and that involves competing at the highest possible level and raking in the wonga that gets thrown at us. Many didn’t but I always enjoy seeing my club competing with the best this country has to offer. The problem is, our team haven’t quite been good enough for the top flight this season. We deserve to get relegated. You always finish where you deserve and just as last season we deservedly finished 11th, this year we deserve to fall through the trapdoor. I think the most frustrating thing about this relegation is that it all seems so avoidable but if you view it like I always have done, that there are maybe 10 teams that are all much of a muchness, any three of which will go down each year, you have to accept that it would only ever be a matter of time before we were one of those three. Its a difficult league and there is no shame in not quite being good enough for it, especially given our background and where we’ve recently come from. Norwich City will always struggle to stay in the top flight for a sustained period of time while there is such disparity between the teams. The pressure to survive is horrific and relentless. It’s not fun. We need to view this as a chance to breathe new life back into the club, into the playing staff and us, the fans. Things had gone very stale for many reasons. I think a number of fans felt alienated from their club and that is never a good thing. This is our chance to reunite, to ‘fall in love again’ with our team. It might all go pear shaped – the Championship is a bugger of a league to get out of – but with a canny appointment we should find ourselves in the top six and have the parachute payments as a back up. I think we’ve been a little unlucky on the pitch, ‘keepers seem to excel against us, we’ve struggled to keep key players fit for long enough to get a run of form, but our biggest issue all along has been a lack of confidence and the failure to score goals and it is that which has cost us our place in the league. Even in games we dominated, of which there were many, we still couldn’t kill teams off. Anyway, I just want to give credit to Sunderland because, well, they deserve to stay up. Their sensational, once in a lifetime run of combined results over the past few weeks has done for us but what an achievement. The manager debate raged all season and may well continue even though it can be proved neither one way or the other, but who is to say that we’d have stayed up regardless of who was in charge and when? That’s all irrelevant now - what’s done is done. When we were promoted everyone played their part in our success. Likewise, everyone should take their share of the blame for relegation. One thing I do know is that next season Carrow Road will be packed to the rafters again and the away faithful will sing their hearts out no matter where. Four years ago we didn’t know if we’d have a club to support. Relegation is not a good thing but off the pitch the club has never been stronger and no matter what McNally says, we are nowhere near ‘death’s door’ and for that I am thankful – we’ve just taken a hefty knock but we can recover from this. We’ll be back, don’t know when, but we will. OTBC
Brilliant post and yes I got sick and tired of rival keepers excelling against us. There was almost an element of fate about the eventual outcome.
hope so. first derby for four years - tickets will be like gold dust!! i suppose there'll be plenty in the home end if i can't secure one...
We will definately be a far stronger team than last time we met that's for sure! Mick will bloody well make sure of that!
Hi Superman, no gripes from me. A team that cannot score goals gets exactly what it deserves. What I found annoying was that despite our striker failure, our manager found we needed another central defender to add to the five we already had. I refrained from adding fuel to the fire but I thought after the Cardiff game we were relegation candidates. That is now hindsight. What we need now is for our board to galvanise itself for next season. It does tend to let the grass grow under its feet hoping all will end well. The team have the nucleus to regain our PL status next season, that will depend on our board keeping the squad together, the one player who has disappointed me has been RvW, he has not put the effort in that Holty did, when the chips were down GH led by example, RvW strikes me that he wanted others to do the donkey work while he took the glory. He is what I call an expensive player, not expensive financially but from a team viewpoint. In short he does not make the effort to rectify the situation. You say you would not want Adams in charge next season. I disagree, the team has definitely shown more fight back since he took over, the big question is does he have the expertise and knowledge to currently manage the club. There is a big difference being an interim manager to running the club full time. Groom him if he is prepared to wait while serving under another appointee, Gunny found the transformation from interim to permanent manager without previous experience too much. Would be a pity to make the same mistake.
Good post and I agree. Speaking of Sunderland's run of form that saw them survive; I noticed that the only other club that survived in the Premier League after being bottom at Christmas was WBA and we went down that season too.
A wolf is a hunter/scavenger we have played like helpless sheep standing in line without any kind of threat just waiting to be eaten .
<hitsnailfirmlyonheademoticon> - We did really seem to suffer from keepers having some of their best games against us!!!
