Keep Calm And Pass The Ball

Farke and Webber seem universally well received; heaven knows who appointed them because as we all know, good appointments were down to McNally and Bowkett while poor ones, ones that were deemed good but ended up as clowns and anyone a little bit crap were always down to Delia, the Michaels or Ed Balls.

In addition we’ve had positive results thus far, completed business during the well-known “holiday” period and while some sales have raised eyebrows; plenty of jetsam has been jettisoned into the sea of change that this summer has represented.

But..

The return of an almost united city support is refreshing, the genuine excitement of many at our apparent change of direction is almost tangible, yet we should retain a degree of realism.

It’s unlikely that we’ll rip up the league from day one. The Farkelution IS a genuine reason for optimism but it may well take time for his new canary philosophy to take flight. We’ll need to be patient.

Now, without pointing fingers (anyone that has ever shouted FORWARD!!! or QUICKLY!!! or any other such tosh from their seat – they’re all pointing at you), fans, myself included, are going to have to just, well, chill out a bit.

At Cambridge, it was apparent that the ball is a valuable commodity. Only as a last resort and not on a Ryan Bennett whim will it now be pumped aimlessly forwards. From place kicks we saw defenders (shudder) dropping to their own by-line to receive the ball. From there they’d even exchange passes all around their own box. Jesus wept. If we’re to make any ground adjustments before the new season I’d suggest St Johns Ambulance taking permanent residence in the River End along with the RSPCA; that way the heart failure and litters of kittens that will be had can be adequately cared for.

Maybe I’m sadistic but there is a part of me that wishes we’d retained Bassong just to see/hear the howls and screams as he knocked a loose pass inside to Russell Martin when the keeper could have lumped it.

The point is though that even without Seb or RyBen, even if it’s Franke and Zimmerman and not Russ, there will be times that our style of play will draw the ire of our lovely yellow collective.

But just as the players have to embrace and adapt to the new philosophy; so do we.

We need to stifle our rumbles of discontent, quell the urge to panic on the players behalf and buy in to what we’re trying to achieve, what we’re trying to instil; we need to allow the “Norwich way” to evolve and become something that we can all identify with.

So, patience. Losing Pritchard to the clogging Cambridge is a massive blow too but it’s not like we’re short of a number 10 (good old Alex…)

The early signs are that there are definitely promising (yellow and) green shoots of recovery. We need to nurture them. A frosty impatience from us might just destroy the development of something beautiful.