Agree with Rick, not sure this is a particularly bad time to sack a coach and find a new one. In fact, it seems likey to be just about the best time of year. The only major uncertainty I can see for any new coach coming in is the will they/wont they with Sainz and Sargent. I think the new coach will have to assume both go and then hope that they get a good proportion of the sale price to reinvest. But that means time is of the essence. So I think the most important task of management after appointing a new coach is resolving to sell Sargent and Sainz quickly and early. Or not at all.
I think there's a good chance Sainz will go as he is nearing the end of his contract but that is not the case with Sargent so we'll have to see. I haven't been overly impressed with Knapper's recruitment so far, but replacing Sainz and/or Sargent and/or Núñez will be a real test for him. I don't think the new owners will be overly impressed with recruiting just young players who we hope will come good in years to come. There is a new 'here and now' expectation about the second year of Knapper's 3 year 'transition'.
The whole point of having a director of football is that there is an overall club plan to work to, making a change of head coach, less impactful on the team. The work on new players to fit the plan will have already been done and I wouldn't of thought the head coach is the sole arbiter of whether or not a player is signed . If ever there is a good time to change the head coach I'm not sure there's a much better time, maybe 3 or 4 weeks earlier than we did.
Conner Southwell on the present situation: "Park the binary targets - the theme has to be progress in appointment, recruitment and results. City will invest again. They have an ownership group with little interest in treading water in English football's second tier. Knapper has sacked two head coaches. He is about to hire his second. This will be his fourth transfer window. It really does feel like the pressure to deliver is on. There is a fanbase craving connection, enjoyment and success. For too long, they have been left short-changed by the football department spanning head coaches, sporting directors, players and now owners. 'Ambition' is the word that Knapper wanted to convey during his 31-minute sitdown - the proof will be through their actions this summer. This was as pointed as City's sporting director has been in public. That ability to meet the tone was important - now it's about meeting the size of the challenge that awaits." https://www.pinkun.com/sport/norwich-city/25151204.norwich-city-analysis-ben-knappers-media-round/
Given the upheaval resulting from it, surely it's important to ask why the final third of the season took the course it did? Rick says there was no clear reason for performances to collapse, Mike says the reason is unclear. But Thorup carried the whole can for it. Did he really deserve it? I don't think so. And I think NorthCity's post #83 is a start in looking in the right direction. Even allowing for the target being top six rather than promotion, the points he makes still apply. Take recruitment: how many of those signed in the two transfer windows with the deliberate intention of reducing the average age of the squad and the wage bill, look like signings for a serious tilt at top six this season rather than e.g. next? Knapper claims we have a very talented squad. We do. But how much of that talent was really ready for the gruelling Championship campaign ahead? How much of that talent was signed with an eye for adding resale value rather than an immediate payoff in terms of a top six finish? Summer window: Doyle (loan), Chrisene, Cordoba, Forson, Slimane (loan), Schwartau, Crnac, Gordon (loan) October: Marcondes (belated acknowledgement of a need left unfulfilled in the summer?) January window: Jurasek, McConville, Dobbin (loan), Wright (loan) Who in that list was supposed to fill the Sara- and Rowe-sized holes? Is Cordoba the equal of or an improvement on Gibson? What other club intent on a top six push would start the season with one, injury prone, striker, plus a talented 20 year old Croatian with a lot to learn, not expected to play much of a part in his first season? A lot of talent signed, yes. A great deal of potential, yes. A talented, balanced squad ready for a gruelling Championship top six campaign, no. Which leads on to the issue of fitness. Eleven of the first team squad are aged 21 or under: Reyes, Doyle, Chrisene, McConville, Fisher, Mahovo, Jurasek, Wright, Schwartau, Forsyth and Crnac. Young bodies are vulnerable, varying in their ability to stand up to the physical demands of a highly competitive environment. Ideally their minutes are carefully managed. But when this group constitutes almost 40% of the first team squad, that can become difficult. Doyle, Crnac and Fisher proved resilient, but all succumbed at a crucial time late in the season; both left backs, Chrisene and Mahovo, have been long term absentees, as has Forsyth from midfield; Jurasek has barely featured. Add the four 22-year olds, Forson, Gibbs, Dobbin and Springett, who have a total of 17 starts between them, and we're talking about over half the first team squad. Which leaves Gunn, Long, Stacey, Duffy, Cordoba, Marcondes, Sorensen, Slimane, McLean, Nunez, Hernandez, Sainz and Sargent. There's a decent spine there for a Championship side challenging for a top six finish -- Gunn, Stacey, Duffy, McLean, Nunez, Sainz and Sargent. If five of those seven -- Gunn, McLean, Nunez, Sainz and Sargent -- had matched Duffy's availability and consistency, we might well have been in the mix. But injuries and stupidity meant they didn't. Three of them, Sargent, Nunez and McLean, all missed roughly a third of the season due to injury or suspension, Gunn came sixth from bottom of a performance table he'd been third from top the previous year, and Sainz's performances fell off a cliff after his ban just before Christmas. Like NorthCity, I think it's Knapper, not Thorup, at whom fingers should be pointed. People will say that Thorup acquiesced in the recruitment; no doubt he did. But Thorup thought he was working to a timescale which allowed for potential to be developed even if results suffered. He was perfectly capable of sending a team out to keep a clean sheet; he did it at Fratton Park. If he had wished to prioritise points above embedding a style of play and giving youngsters a chance to show what they could do, he could easily have done so. He didn't because he took the brief he'd originally been given seriously. When questioned latterly in pre-match interviews about whether he planned to change tactics for the upcoming game, he replied "No, that would not be us". His every word and every action, and Riddersholm's pre-season interview, are proof that Knapper's claim that top six was the target from the very start, and everybody knew it, is a lie. Riddersholm didn't know it; Thorup didn't know it; had they known it they would have managed games differently. In his latest interview Knapper refers to the problems caused by availability and fitness. But he talks as if they were mere inconveniences rather than major determinants of the season's outcome, nothing to do with his recruitment. His entire interview is an exercise in diverting blame from himself. He repeats the canard that Thorup failed to improve those playing for him; Fisher, Crnac, Doyle, Chrisene, Forsyth, Mahovo and Wright have all testifed to the contrary. Also disgraceful is Knapper's brushing off Thorup's accusation that the goalposts had been moved as the sour grapes of a hurt man. That's not the Thorup we have come to know; but it sure tells us something about Knapper.
I agree that Knapper has been a big part of the failure as well. He is responsible for the 'new direction' after sacking Wagner and then the recruitment for that new direction. 1950 says that we're in 'total chaos' now, but the situation now is much the same as that a year ago after Wagner was sacked and a new manager was coming in and new players were needed to suit that manager and his tactics. The difference is that Knapper has now had a year and a half's experience and the pressure is now on for him to produce. Both he and the new manager will know exactly what is expected of them and what the target is.
There was no chaos until Thorup was sacked; there was a drop off in performance primarily due to the chickens of Knapper's recruitment coming home to roost. A year ago there was a coherent plan, with a realistic timescale for achieving promotion. Owners*, SD and HC were speaking with one voice. All that was needed was Knapper to hold his nerve, back JHT, and restore unity in the dressing room by moving on those who no longer bought into the project, one or two of whom were destined to leave anyway. * Rewatch Attanasio's interview following the AGM last October. Questioned about how he saw the club developing, he referenced what happened at the Brewers after he took over, how it had initially taken some years to strengthen sufficiently to feature in the post-season playoffs for the World Series, and longer to become established participants. The implication was clear: the ambition is to become established in the EPL, but it will take time, don't expect immediate results. He ends by saying that if Norwich aren't in the EPl in 5 years time, he will have failed.
There is no chaos now, except in 1950's perception of events. There was no chaos when Wagner was sacked and eventually replaced by Thorup so that Knapper's vision of a 3 year transition could be set in motion. We were told by all and sundry that we should be excited about this vision, but at the same time we must be patient because it would take, well, 3 years to happen. I was not excited; neither did I feel inclined to wait 3 years for the vision to become a reality. Not surprisingly, the vision fell apart before the first year was completed. The young, relatively inexperienced Head Coach, hired by the young, relatively inexperienced Sporting Director, did his best with the young collection of young players added to the squad but things turned out badly as the vision declined into a flood of goals against. We now await a new HC and new players to take over the slightly tarnished vision and hopefully put it back on track. Let's hope it works out better this time.
According to an article on Pink Un site, Russ Martin is not in contention to be our next head coach. Can't say I am sorry to hear this.
Dictionary definition of chaos is ' disorder and confusion ' Whether you agreed with it or not a transition plan was put in place in July 2024 which set out progress to promotion, involving young players, over a 3 year period with a big name Coach coming in to be groomed to take over the top job. After 6 months the aim was changed to playoffs and possible promotion this season which may or may not have contributed to the drop off in form. Within another 3 months the Head Coach and his Number Two are sacked and the named coach follows them out of the door. In my simple mind that is disorder. We now have no Head Coach, Number 2 or main coach. Nobody knows whether it is Knapper or the owner making the decisions, nobody seems to know who the new Head Coach is going to be, whether he is going to follow the original plan set out or what his views are on player retention or player purchase. He will not meet the squad of players until preseason training and most of the transfer window will have gone before he could assess what he has got already in the squad. There is also the need for a new Number 2 and another coach or whether the new people will face a ' play offs or the sack ' situation. I could go on and on but to a simpleton like me that reeks of confusion and confusion plus disorder is chaos.
Taking your definition of 'disorder and confusion', I don't see either at the moment. I'm not a great admirer of Knapper, but he does appear to be moving logically through the transition to a new HC and assistants. For once, he has also communicated about this and also the position on players who may or may not be leaving. His first obligation was to consider Wilshere's desire to become HC and then deal with that, which he did. He is now drawing up a shortlist of candidates to present to the Board of Directors before interviews begin over the next few weeks or so. He's s also made it clear that the direction will be the same with a new HC suited to that. That doesn't seem like chaos to me. As for the players, he has announced the retained list early and also made it clear that money for new players is available and that there are no plans to sell players. The emphasis is on strengthening the squad, not weakening it. As he puts it: “We're a business at the end of the day, so we need to make sure that things balance. We're not completely bound by having to sell players before we can do anything. It's not a situation like that. But of course, it's a factor. We work multiple windows in advance, where you try to model what may or may not happen and what that might mean for your strategy. That's normal. That's the same with any club going into any summer. There's another dynamic you have to consider, which is the player perspective. We understand where we sit in the broader kind of landscape, and that has to be a factor in what happens as well." That doesn't sound like 'disorder and confusion' to me.
It suprised me that a lot of the fans that wanted him are the same that complained about passing it around at the back, the very same football that Martin plays, if anything a more laboured version than JHT did.
Have you watched Knappers recent interview 1950? He states that to be around the top 6 should always be an aim for this football club, as did JHT in one of his first interviews for the club, but it was not a fixed target. He also says that league position wasn’t the reason for sacking JHT, but rather the trends/ results were on a downward trajectory with no sign of JHT being able to change this. I liked JHT and certainly hoped he would have been given next season to see if he could address things, however Knapper is a data driven man and that seems to be where the decision has stemmed from. As much as I like JHT no one can argue that the performances weren’t awful for the last 2 months and that the results were justified. If we had been playing well but unfortunately lost then he may still be in post but the fact is we were underperforming and BK has been decisive. In regards to Wilshere this was a plan for him to take over from JHT in a year or so time, it would have been very risky to have put him in charge after only being involved in senior coaching for 4 months.
If Knapper still doesn't know who the next head coach is going to be, what was the point of sacking Thorup with 2 games to go, given there was nothing to play for? Especially if there was no plan to give Wilshere the role FT? Presumably the plan for next season (25-26) is promotion; either automatically or play-offs. Therefore should the club be outside the top 6, or >3 points away from, there should be no quarms in calling for the sacking of the next manager, say after 15 matches (33% of the season)?
We are never going to agree on this Rick but just one point. Thorup was sacked on the 22nd April - just over 3 weeks ago, The Club must have known at least a couple of weeks before that this was coming. You now say that Knapper is drawing up a shortlist of candidates to present to the Board for interviews to take place over the next few weeks. Really? Surely an organised Club has a fair idea as to who they want as a replacement before they sack the incumbent. How long has it taken for Watford to replace Cleverly for example. The situation is urgent - we are not replacing the tea lady! Isn't this just another example of Knapper not being a Director of Football but being a mouthpiece for the owner. Another example of disorder and confusion.
According to the EDP article below, the interviewing has already begun with Gary O'Neil being interviewed on Monday. It always seems to take an eternity to appoint a new manager but if this is true, at least the process has begun. https://www.edp24.co.uk/sport/25164168.lijnders-oneil-cooper-norwich-city-running---reports/
And ex Liverpool assistant Ljinders has appeared at the top of the betting. Having interview in the next few days.
