It’s All In The Mind. Now Or Never Nodge.

Warning: The following contains a dangerous mix of psychological analysis and NCFC-based emotionally-laden opinion.

The plaudits for Norwich’s defeat at home to Liverpool are in danger of turning into a Hughton-esque pat on the back for being resilient. Resilience was Hughton’s calling card. He talked it up before games, after games, between games. We had to be psychologically tough, because we entered each game as the underdog. Eventually the message stuck. Not the resilience bit – the underdog bit. And we all know how that turned out.

I argued during his reign that no-one would remember how valiantly we went down 1-0 to Chelsea if we ended up relegated. We were duly relegated; does anyone hark back to that performance now? You know the answer. The same applies to the Liverpool defeat – we are in danger of spending too much time creating a meaningless psychological reward for losing narrowly and not motivating ourselves with the task at hand.

Daniel Farke, like most of us, appears to be viewing the team through a lens that has been shaped from the first third of our season, where injuries utterly destroyed any momentum or chance to tactically build on last season. Yet now we have a fully fit squad, we are playing the most cautious football since his first season in the championship. Why?

In psychology, discourse analysis looks at how phenomena become ‘reality’ through being shaped by language and social perception. Essentially, if it’s talked about enough, we assume it to be the norm regardless of what might be the facts. Some politicians and journalists are very good at this, you may have noticed.

Put this into the context of Norwich’s season: after a while, journalists and fans can’t write or say anything more about Norwich’s injury crisis and the effect it has on results. So they start to look for other reasons, because psychologically we need to pin our failure to something: naivety, Delia, lack of cutting edge, not good enough at this level, whatever Wright and Shearer say on MOTD, etc, etc. None of this is based on evidence – true evidence, that is, because Farke’s team is not able to function as a fully living, breathing organism – all of which rely on its other parts being healthy and functioning to work properly – and therefore cannot be truly judged.

Psychologically, what we’ve all done is created a discourse that simply isn’t true – one that says Norwich City aren’t good enough. There is no evidence for this because the team has not had the opportunity to operate as a complete unit with all the hours and hours of training, collaboration and confidence-building that make it.

Look at Sheffield United – what would we give for the good luck they’ve had with injuries? I’m pretty sure we’d have at least another ten points if this tragedy hadn’t struck us. As an organisational psychologist myself, I am duty bound to admit I have no actual evidence for that last statement but I know what I believe.

Last season, each injury came in ones and twos – enough for us to cope with and even introduce a new hero – Aarons, Godfrey, Vrancic, McLean, Hernandez. We could build with small tweaks here and there. Each player brought a different dimension to the team – a positive one. We created a discourse that we could overcome anything. And guess what: we did.

So if we, and Daniel Farke, believe that this is the time to prioritise defensive solidity over all else, then we are wrong. We are as good as down anyway, and our squad – now fully fit, don’t forget – is packed with attacking, exciting talent. And we have a fully fit back four, who are playing well. That is a foundation we can now build on, rather than hope for. Do we want to wait patiently and hope not to concede, or do we want to trust that we are now in much better shape and use the best of our attacking prowess?

If we believe the discourse we’ve built up since the autumn, we will go down meekly. If we challenge it, we will give ourselves the best chance any team at the bottom of the league has ever had. Can you remember how rocking Carrow Road was last season as we unleashed wave after wave of attacks against sides? How would that feel for the likes of West Ham, who still have to visit us and are suffering their own form of negative discourse? How did it feel for Newcastle, themselves under the weight of damning social perception, when we tore them apart in August?

I do not want to end this season disappointed. The league position doesn’t matter. The manner of performance does. In fact, it is crucial to how we go into next season, whatever league that is in. Go down timidly and the pressure will be unbearable in the Championship. Make Carrow Road a psychological fortress again and we give ourselves a chance. Let’s get it on. It’s now or never.