LEE PAYNE

Tag: smith

  • David Wagner is Norwich City’s new manager – this is a watershed moment for the club

    The events of the last week will, I think, prove to be a watershed moment for Norwich City Football Club.

    Former Huddersfield manager David Wagner is the new man in charge of Norwich City

    The displeasure and the disconnect felt by the fans was not only about the club’s repeated inability to put up a fight in the Premier League. It was deeper than that. We felt like we were being taken for granted. The people in power had shut themselves away and lost touch with us. The head coach just didn’t seem to ‘get’ Norwich.

    I found myself in the unusual position of directly calling for the manager to be sacked. Norwich isn’t a club that is known for wielding the axe. A manager tends to be given enough – some might say more than enough – time to make their mark and see out a tough time. The end comes when a natural conclusion is reached.

    Only thirteen months into the job, however, Dean Smith had to go. Many were sceptical about his appointment in the first place. He would have had to hit the ground running to get those people on board. It wouldn’t have taken much to turn the atmosphere toxic.

    On the pitch, Smith failed. It is as simple as that. He was given the job to keep Norwich in the Premier League and they were relegated with a whimper, rock bottom. Then it was to get them straight back up. He left with the automatic promotion places a long way away.

    These players haven’t become bad all of a sudden. Several of them have won the Championship title twice with us before. It’s unrealistic to expect them to stroll to a third, but for that squad to be in mid table, looking average at best, is not good enough. Teemu Pukki is a striker with a proven record at this level who would be picked by any other team in the division, yet he is having a quiet season by his standards. Max Aarons had been touted for a lucrative move to some of the world’s biggest clubs, yet his form this season has seen him at times unable to get into the starting eleven. Marcelino Nunez arrived in the summer with a legion of fans in his native Chile, excited about their man showing the English game what he was capable of. He displayed his skill and flair early on but has gone off the boil as time has gone on. My only explanation for this is the way these players have been coached. Dean Smith (and his assistant, Craig “Shakey” Shakespeare) have taken good players and made them worse.

    The fans became bored of the ponderous, directionless style of play. As the situation came to a head, they would boo when the ball was played back to the centre halves or goalkeeper. We actually did a lot of playing out from the back under the much loved Daniel Farke, but it always felt like there was a purpose to it. We have memories of many beautiful goals, a culmination of tens of passes, to prove it. The football under Smith was too predictable, too easy to play against, too lacking in entertainment.

    When planning to write this, I looked up the records of Norwich’s previous managers and discovered that the percentage of games that we won under Smith (28.57%) was the worst for a permanent coach since the 27 game spell of Gary Megson (18.5%) in 1995-96.

    On the pitch, Smith was a write-off. He might be a ‘good bloke’ and a ‘good coach’ – the Aston Villa fans showered him with love when he first came to Norwich, but months down the line admitted that he didn’t really have a plan for a Villa side that didn’t have Jack Grealish in it. He will probably get another job soon (he has already been linked with the vacant position at Portsmouth) and enjoy some modest success. I don’t have any ill will towards the guy now he’s gone. Some managers fit a club and some don’t.

    The dull performances and bad results on the field made me refuse to go and watch our home games for two months. I saw the defeat to Luton on 18th October and didn’t return until the draw with Reading on 30th December, the first game after Smith’s sacking. But it wasn’t the actual football that hurt me the most.

    The relationship between a football club and its fans is special. Mess with it at your peril. It isn’t about eleven men or women trying to kick a ball into a net. Your football club represents your home. It represents you. For a lot of us, the team’s achievements are our achievements. We feel personal success when they do well.

    Norwich is special. The people of this fine city, this fine isolated city, are fiercely proud of it. That is reflected in the football club. We are a club that has always done things differently, where the fans have not been treated as customers but as the lifeblood of the whole thing.

    Daniel Farke completely got that. It might seem shallow, but the way he would always applaud every section of the stadium at the end of a game made us feel valued. I was never expecting Dean Smith to wave his arms around and give it the full “olé” to all four corners of Carrow Road, but the bloke never even came on the pitch. It was just a small sign that he was there to work with the players and not with us. He probably never saw it that way but that’s how it felt. That approach never had a long term future at Norwich City.

    Daniel Farke always showed his appreciation for the Norwich fans

    Smith didn’t seem to like us and his uninspiring press conferences didn’t help either. I became resentful. I didn’t want to look down from the Barclay and see him on the touchline as the face of my club. I used my platform, a column once a month in the Eastern Daily Press, to say the club needed a new manager. I did it twice, actually, and the second time I was stronger. Strong enough that I wondered if they would print it without toning it down. To their credit they did. I obviously had no part to play in Smith leaving, the tide was already going that way, but a week after the second column he was sacked. I could look at my club with optimism again.

    The most pleasing thing, for me, was something that the sporting director Stuart Webber said in an interview with Sky Sports on Monday:

    “I’ve been here for six years. I’ve had a great time here, a great fanbase with great numbers that turn up. But I probably didn’t appreciate quite how important that connection between the head coach and the fanbase until it wasn’t there. 

    I’d only known that with Daniel (Farke). We finished 14th in the first season but ultimately the fans wanted to believe in him because the fans had that connection. 

    It’s not about having a happy clapper that walks on to the pitch to keep the fans happy because that doesn’t work if there’s no substance behind his work. 

    We as a football club have to be aware that it’s important we get someone that really understands the community, the fanbase because it’s a little bit unique in that respect.” 

    — Stuart Webber

    It seems that, at last, the penny may have dropped. It is not enough to just bring in a manager with strong footballing credentials, they have to be able to connect with the fans.

    A shiver went down my spine when I heard the names of Steve Bruce and Chris Wilder mentioned. Two men I certainly don’t want leading my club. But it would appear that they were only rumours, and rumours that were always wide of the mark.

    In the end, Webber has returned to someone he has worked with before. Someone he has had success with before. Someone born in Germany. Someone who has previously managed Borussia Dortmund’s reserve team.

    Alas, it’s not a stunning return for Daniel Farke. It’s actually a friend of his and his predecessor in that Dortmund job. It’s David Wagner.

    Wagner is best known in this country for his time in charge of Huddersfield Town, where he led them to a surprise Premier League promotion via the play-offs in 2017 and then, even more impressively, kept them there with a successful battle against relegation. It was the first time Huddersfield had been in the top flight since 1972. He left in the January of Huddersfield’s second Premier League season with the club eight points adrift of safety, but he remains well liked for his achievements in West Yorkshire and for the Gegenpressing style of play he implemented.

    In Wagner, Norwich have a manager in place who is hungry for success after a couple of short spells at Schalke and Swiss side Young Boys. He is likely to have a clear plan for how he wants his team to play, and that plan is likely to have Pukki licking his lips. He will also have the backing of the fans.

    This feels right. It feels like it might work. We might just have the manager we need. And if out of all of this we have a hierarchy that will never again underestimate the importance of the fans to Norwich City, these are good times indeed.

  • We won a game of football! | Norwich Nuggets: Everton (h)

    Adam Idah scored as Norwich beat Everton 2-1 at Carrow Road

    Morale has been so low around Norwich City Football Club recently that I didn’t even go to the Boxing Day game against Arsenal – I was pretty scathing in my latest column in the paper, too. Six straight defeats, no goals for more than nine hours, rock bottom of the league – I didn’t head to Carrow Road today in a particularly optimistic mood.

    Wonders will never cease, however, and a couple of crazy minutes in the first half followed by a tense and scrappy second half brought the result of Norwich 2-1 Everton. We won a game of football! So what have we learnt?

    Adam Idah may have found a role in this team

    I’ll be honest, I’ve never really rated Adam Idah. He doesn’t score enough goals for me and he gets knocked off the ball too easily. But today might just be a turning point for him. Instead of playing as an out-and-out striker, he played in a position behind Teemu Pukki and it really seemed to suit him. His hold up play was as good as I’ve seen it, he helped the midfield out when they needed it and when his chance came he took it well for his first Premier League goal. One swallow does not make a summer, but this is definitely worth persisting with.

    Let’s not lower ourselves to time wasting, please

    I get it. Norwich hadn’t won for such a long time in the league that they’ve sort of forgotten how to do it. In the rare situation of having a lead to protect, they seemed to start wasting as much time as possible from a ludicrously early point in the second half. When Richarlison scored a rather excellent overhead kick to make it 2-1, we went into overdrive with the running down of the clock.

    Some fans will lap this up, as so many teams have done it to us, they will have loved seeing Norwich do it to someone else. But I’d rather we didn’t lower ourselves to that level. I would prefer the team to have the belief that they can see a game out properly. The feigning of injuries made for a scrappy game.

    Watford away is a massive game

    As the clock ticked slowly through the seven minutes of added time, it felt like a crucial point in Norwich’s season – if they were to concede and only come away with a point, it would be a crushing blow that might well have put the final nail in the coffin. By seeing it out and getting the three points, suddenly the relegation battle is not over and with Watford and Newcastle drawing today our next game could see us move out of the bottom three.

    Deliciously, our next game is at Watford, live on TV on Friday night. There’s every chance we’ll lose, but… you never know. It’s the hope that kills you.

    Norwich held on for a massive three points

  • ‘He’s a coach. He knows what he’s doing’ | Norwich Nuggets: Southampton (h)

    Oh, how I’ve missed that winning feeling. Walking amongst the crowds back to my car after Norwich City 2-1 Southampton, there was a buzz that had been missing so far this season. Having won none of their first ten games, the Canaries now have back-to-back Premier League victories for the first time since 2016 and, having failed to win on any of the previous 32 occasions they had gone behind in a top-flight game, they secured the three points today.

    New Norwich manager Dean Smith adorned the front of the matchday programme

    I overheard someone talking on his phone near the burger van outside Carrow Road after the game. He was telling whoever was on the other end, quite rightly, that Norwich were poor in the first half (that was not the word he used, mind) but that new head coach Dean Smith ‘sorted it out at half time’ and said ‘he’s a coach. He knows what he’s doing.’ I agree with this unknown gentleman and, for me, that was the most impressive outcome from the game. City were dreadful in the first half and were very lucky to go in level at the break. Smith clearly noticed what was going wrong and corrected it, as they were a far better side when they came back out and deserved their win.

    Max Aarons is more of a winger than a full back

    Southampton’s Kyle Walker-Peters must not have been able to believe the amount of space he had on the Carrow Road pitch in the first half. The number of times that the ball was pinged to him completely unguarded beggared belief, and this was the fault of Max Aarons. There is a lot to admire about the academy product but he is constantly drawn out of position and it feels like he might be better suited to playing on the wing, running at the opposition and putting in crosses, with a more defensively minded player at full back.

    Good to see Cantwell and Gilmour back in the fold

    Billy Gilmour grew into the game for Norwich City

    Daniel Farke seemed to have given up on both Todd Cantwell and Billy Gilmour towards the end of his tenure. It was positive to see both players very much involved with Dean Smith’s first couple of training sessions and certainly to see both in the starting eleven today. Cantwell didn’t have the best of games, clearly lacking in match sharpness and appearing to pull a muscle before being substituted at half time, but Gilmour grew into the game and his well-directed corner allowed Grant Hanley to head home Norwich’s winner. The Scot on loan from Chelsea was named the sponsor’s man of the match.

    Off the bottom – is the great escape on?

    It feels like a long time ago now but Norwich finally got their first win of the season at Brentford before the international break and backed that up with another three points today. Combined with the boost that a change in manager usually brings, there is a growing hope that City might be able to grind out enough points to stay in the Premier League. They have moved off the bottom of the table, thanks to Newcastle remaining winless, and appear to be on an upward trajectory. At the very least, they are no longer cut adrift.

    Captain Grant Hanley headed the winning goal for Norwich from a corner

  • Thoughts on Norwich City and the new manager

    Earlier today I was contacted by someone from a website looking for a Norwich fan to answer a couple of questions about how the season has been going, what went wrong for Daniel Farke and what the hopes were for the new manager Dean Smith. As it turned out, by the time I’d written my piece they had found someone else and didn’t need me. So it doesn’t go to waste, here’s what I wrote:

    Verdict on season so far

    It couldn’t have gone much worse. I approached Norwich’s return to the Premier League with some trepidation because I feel as fans we are still damaged from the awful experience we had last time. When the fixture list came out and gave us the champions, the previous champions and the FA Cup winners in our first three games I was concerned that we would be playing catch up and low on confidence from a very early stage and that is exactly what happened.

    Dean Smith is now the manager of Norwich City

    Verdict on manager

    There will always be a lot of love for Daniel Farke from Norwich fans. When he took over the club had a poor squad, full of players who either weren’t good enough or didn’t want to be here. He played a big role in the development of James Maddison and the money we received from selling him to Leicester helped to get the club back onto a sound financial footing. I have never seen a Norwich manager with such confidence in youth – Max Aarons, Ben Godfrey, Jamal Lewis, Todd Cantwell and Andrew Omobamidele are just some of the academy products that blossomed under his guidance. He had a real connection with the fans and, in supposedly one of the hardest leagues of them all to get out of, delivered the Championship title twice.

    Sadly, he was never able to crack the Premier League. I had desperately hoped that he had learned from two years ago and this time would take us into the top flight with an attitude of ‘unfinished business’. Unfortunately, he shied away from the attractive, possession-based style of play that had brought us success and tried to make the team play in a way that they weren’t capable of. By the end, he didn’t seem to know what his best eleven was or how to arrange them on the pitch and he simply ran out of road. I have seen the world ‘underwhelming’ used a lot in the reaction to the appointment of Dean Smith (including from myself) but the more I think about it, the more I think he fits. He just needs to find the right combination to get the club feeling good about itself again. I am convinced that the squad have not shown anywhere near to what they can do so far and if he can get them going then I honestly think we could still stay up. Good luck to him, we will be right behind him.