I'm Only Happy When It Rains

Garbage once sang “I’m only happy when it rains”. A sentiment Norwich City fans seem to have coopted as their own. An unofficial slogan for the club’s perennially downbeat supporters, who stalk the internet looking for reasons to be miserable.

Relegation at the end of last season was a bitter pill to swallow; this season, by contrast, seems to be going quite well so far. So why does that feel like such a controversial statement to make?

A situation which has played on my mind for some time was crystallised by a conversation I overheard at the gym a few weeks back. The day before, Norwich has gone to Goodison Park to play an away fixture against Everton in the League Cup; we won – and won fairly comfortably – but the manner of the win was also very encouraging. It was our first victory at Goodison for more than twenty years, in a cup competition (which we traditionally don’t perform well in). At that point Everton were sitting in second place in the Premier League. The much maligned Steven Naismith got himself back on the scoresheet, and one of our brightest young talents, who has come up through the club’s youth academy, Josh Murphy scored a brilliant solo goal as well.

So, I was surprised at the conversation I heard. A conversation in which two people clutched at ant straw they could find to diminish and undermine this result. A conversation in which everything good about the game was explained away and loftily dismissed, while tiny errors were magnified and fixated upon.

“Oh, but Everton didn’t put out their strongest side…” “Oh, but Naismith was fortune to get his goal…”

guys at the gym saying Norwich only won last night because Everton ‘put out a Reserves side’. It’s all I can do to keep out of it. #NCFC

— Kit Marsden (@manek43509) September 21, 2016

that’s not even true. But what annoys me is how some ‘supporters’ seek out any excuse to piss on this club from a great height. #NCFC

— Kit Marsden (@manek43509) September 21, 2016

they’d rather look for reasons to say “ahh, but y’see, it doesn’t really count…“ than enjoy a good performance and a damn fine result. #NCFC

— Kit Marsden (@manek43509) September 21, 2016

not just yesterday, in fact — but that past few games have been excellent for us. And you’d still rather look for reasons to complain? #NCFC

— Kit Marsden (@manek43509) September 21, 2016

I’m not going to say that supporters have no right to complain when they see disappointing results, sub-par performances, or feel let down by the club. But this was a performance worthy of praise, and a result which saw us progress to the next round of the cup. Is it so hard just to enjoy that? There will be plenty of legitimate reasons to be unhappy in the future – there always are – without seeking them out now.

The Everton game is not an isolated incident. After every victory (yes, victory) I will read comments about how we were “lucky”, we “scraped by”, we “didn’t deserve it”… When players make mistakes, or when the manager doesn’t get his tactics spot-on, fans are on their backs for it no time – sometimes for good reason. And yet when we win games, it is dismissed as “luck”, or treated as though it’s some sort of anomaly (even when we have – at the time of writing – an 83% unbeaten record in the league this season, having failed to score points only twice so far since the beginning of August).

Why are we – as a club, as supporters – so keen to minimise success, and to find a reason – any reason at all – to downplay good results and act as thought they somehow don’t count? While at the same time amplifying and parading our failures around as vindications of our own malcontented narcissism?

Why do some fans feel they can only celebrate winning with a caveat attached? We are we so keen to seek out the negatives in any situation?

In Alex Neil, we have a promising young manager who has won a Play-Off final, who has just been awarded Championship Manager Of The Month for September, and who has (at the time of writing) an overall 86% undefeated record at the Championship level.  And yet, a non-trivial number of fans frequently describe him as 'clueless', 'out-of-his-depth', and so on…  He 'gets lucky'; he's not 'proven'; 'the jury's still out'.  He'll always be blamed for losing a game, yet it seems people will go to extraordinary lengths not to give him credit for the good results which, statistically, are actually the norm.

That’s not say that there aren’t negatives in games, that the manager never makes mistakes, or that we can’t improve as a team. Several times this season, we seem to have ‘switched off’ towards the end of the game when we’re in the lead, and let in goals late on – we got away with it against Cardiff and against Wolves, but not against Newcastle. We’ve been awarded penalties which we haven’t converted into goals – whether that’s down to poor penalty-taking, or good goalkeeping on the part of the opposition ‘keeper (the latter of which we have no control over) is maybe up for debate, but we can’t afford to let it become a pattern of missed opportunities.

Fans have every right to be concerned about these issues – particularly if they happen more than once. I have flagged up both of these things on social media. I know we’re not perfect. Besides, part of sport is that no matter how well you’re doing, you’re always trying to improve.

But when you dominate a game, score good goals and win comfortable, and supporters’ comments after the match appear to fixate only on the minor details which could have been better – seeming to ignore completely the huge bulk of positives in the game – that strikes me as a little odd. Having high standards is one thing; being determined to look for the bad points, while chalking up anything good to luck or opposition errors is just bizarre.  Sure, it's completely understandable to point out what needs improving – but how is it so difficult also to acknowledge that, generally, we're doing pretty well right now?

Even if we were to register a ‘perfect’ performance in the league – playing well, dominating possession, scoring four or five goals, keeping a clean sheet, not even allowing the other side to register a shot on target – I would expect to see negative comments… We were lucky; the opposition were weak; that level of performance won’t be good enough if we get promoted…

This season is far from over; there is still an awfully long way to go. Our early results have put us in a very strong position, but we haven’t been promoted yet – and yet already I have seen people predicting another relegation from the Premier League next season… For me, this speaks to mindset of far too many supporters; even acknowledging a fairly self-evident fact – that we are clearly one of the early promotion contenders this season – is couched in negative terms, seeing it simply as a gateway to future disappointment rather than anything to be excited about in itself.

Trying to predict football results two years into the future is a fool’s errand, and yet for some there seems to be something cathartic about looking for any excuse to do the club down, make the worst of every situation, and seek out reasons to be unhappy where there ought not be any. They cannot, and will not, ever be satisfied; the idea of giving the team, or the manager, any credit for their success is so alien to them that they simply cannot bring themselves to do it. They’re only happy when it rains.

To me, that doesn’t sound like ‘support’ at all.

Should Norwich sack Alex Neil?

No.

I suppose I could leave it there – and this will have been the most straightforward, stress-free thing I've ever written.  But I imagine most people are expecting me to go on and explain why we should keep faith with Alex Neil, despite a recent run of poor form which has seen us sink into the bottom three of the Premier League table…

Let's start with something that should be obvious, but oddly never seems to be: sacking the manager is not a 'silver bullet' that fixes everything instantly.  Of course, I have written about this before, but that doesn't make any difference; as soon as you lose a couple of games, people start murmuring about sacking the manager, as if that always cures everything – if that were the case, clubs would have twenty different managers every season.  They don't, because that would be absurd.  Knee-jerk sackings are not the answer – and if you're the sort of person who would see their team lose and immediately reach for the P45 at the final whistle, without a moment's thought, you maybe need to reevaluate how you make decisions.

This view is a bizarre extension of the 'Something must be done!' attitude which sadly pervades many areas of life at the moment.  Anything that happens is met with a chorus of demands to ban something, remove something, change something, legislate for something…  Because something must be done!  Regardless of what that 'something' is.  It is the response of a feeble mind – and it won't help our club.

But let's move on from there.  Let's assume that we've got past reflexive demands for action-for-action's-sake, and decided that a change of manager actually might be no bad thing, on its own merits.  Before we do anything, we need to have a replacement lined up who is better.  Not 'just as good' – and certainly not worse! – but a guaranteed step up in quality from the manager we currently have.  And we need to be sure that this person is not only a better calibre of manager than the incumbent, but is available to start immediately, and would be willing to take a job at Norwich (a relegation-threatened club with, in Premier League terms, a relatively small budget).

So who is there who fits that bill?  If no names spring alacritously to mind, I'm not too surprised.  I can think of top-level managers who are out-of-work – but would they want to come to Norwich?  I can think of managers whose services we probably could secure – but would they really be better than Alex Neil?  I'm not convinced.  And unless both of those stipulations are met, we're better off doing nothing at all.

Oh, how short are the memories of some football supporters…

But what of Alex Neil himself?  Even if a good manager is available, and happy to start work tomorrow…  Does Alex really deserve the sack?!  This is a manager who came into the club midway through the season last year, when our promotion challenge looked to be fading, and turned things around.  We all remember the euphoria of our Play-Off Final day out at Wembley, don't we?  He did that.

This is the manager who got us promoted to the Premier League.  This is the manager who got a point away to Liverpool; the manager who got a point at home to top four Arsenal; the manager who beat Manchester United on their own turf.  That deserves recognition.

Yes, he has made mistakes – he is only thirty-four years old, and he is still learning his craft while having to adapt to a level higher than any previous challenge he has encountered in his fledgling managerial career – but he has potential and ambition aplenty, and has never been under any illusions about how tough a league the Premier League is.  Comments like 'out of his depth' or 'lost the plot' are harsh, to say the least.

It is unreasonable not to permit a young manager still finding his feet to make errors.  How else does one learn?  Not only is it unreasonable, though, it is stupid.  It is illogical.  Those mistakes, more often than not, stem from inexperience.  How does one gain experience?  Not by being sacked.

At this rate, the 'sacking culture' in modern football will cut off far too much promising young coaching talent at the knees.  Where will the next generation of football managers come from?

In ten years' time, people will look at the Premier League and ask: "Why are there so few talented British coaches managing at the top level?  Why is there no new blood in management in this country?"  Because they were sacked after four games in charge by ruthless CEOs acceding to the demands of unforgiving fans who cared more about exacting their pounds of flesh than looking to the future of either their own club, or the sport of football as a whole.

Alex Neil is a young manager who deserves his chance.  Norwich City need to give it to him.  And – who knows? – there is opportunity yet for that faith to be repaid.  Time has not run out; panicking now solves nothing.

Addendum (added Monday, 8th February, following various discussions on the topic):

Those who would favour Alex Neil's immediate removal have cautioned me more than once about the dangers of the club "leaving it too late" to sack him.  It is an argument – and an expression – which I abhor.  Even leaving aside the arrogance of thinking you are the person who can tell with absolute certainty when the optimum time would be for the club to act, what baffles me about this line of argument is that that it seems to skip over the question of whether or not Alex Neil should be sacked; it assumes that it is self-evident that he should be, and that the only matter left to settle is when.  It is an assumption which speaks to the central conceit of this outlook – that sacking the manager is always the answer.

The mindset seems to be that a manager's sacking is inevitable; that the only question around the issue is not "if" he should be sacked, but "when" to do it; and that sooner is always better.  This cannot be good for the club, or for the sport.  That is not a healthy attitude to have, and the worry here is that we will creep inexorably towards a farcical scenario where it is standard procedure to sack the manager after every loss, most managers last only a few weeks in a job, and the pool of managerial talent dries up completely.

Wembley: One week on

This time last week, I was taking my place in the stands at Wembley Stadium (Block 121, Row 19, Seat 274 – if you're interested), preparing to watch Norwich City play Middlesborough for the honour of promotion to the Premier League in what's been dubbed the 'richest match in football', the Championship Play-Off Final.  As I did so, I thought back to a piece I wrote in this Blog a few months before, called What If Norwich Don't Go Up? – and I wondered whether I'd need it in a few hours time.

Here we go…! #NCFC #PlayOffFinal #OTBC

A photo posted by Kit Marsden (@manek43509) on May 25, 2015 at 6:54am PDT

Thankfully, Norwich dominated the game, and ran out 2-0 winners to secure a return to the top flight at the first time of asking.  The jubilation of Norwich supporters at the final whistle was a far cry from the despair we'd all felt almost exactly a year before, as we were relegated from the Premier League.

Final whistle. 2-0 Norwich, we are going up! #NCFC #PlayOffFinal

A video posted by Kit Marsden (@manek43509) on May 25, 2015 at 1:56pm PDT

But even in the midst of these joyous scenes, I was conscious that we were now in for a long summer of speculation, transfer rumours, and arguing on fan forum websites and social media.  So, having deliberately waited a week for the dust to settle and the euphoria to die down slightly, here are my thoughts on Norwich City going forward into the Premier League in 2015…

Shortly after our relegation last season, I wrote a long piece about our attitude as a club, and about setting long-term aims.  I spoke about wanting to become an established Premier League club – not a 'yo-yo club' which bounces up and down between the top of the Championship and the bottom of the Premier League.

In my view, our approach should be the same as I outlined when I wrote about What If Norwich Don't Go Up? – evolution, not revolution.  The way to get the stability we need is to stick with what we know works; as I said before, we have a good thing going with Alex Neil, and with a squad of players who are hungry for success and working hard, and we shouldn't jeopardise that with big changes.

I was pleased to see that the club wasted very little time in making Graham Dorrans' loan contract into a permanent move.  I like what Dorrans brings to the team, and he has good Premier League experience with West Brom.  For me, keeping hold of the players – and the coaching team – that we currently have has to be our first priority.

After that, we can look at strengthening in a few key areas.  Not replacing the players we have, for the most part, but adding to the squad in subtle, but clever ways.  In my opinion, there are two main positions to look at: centre-back, and centre-forward.  Let's talk about each individually.

Defensively, Norwich City have been a case-study in how important it is to get the right manager.  At the start of the season which has just ended, we were shaky at the back, and unsure of ourselves; Alex Neil, however, has taken the same players and toughened up our defence no end.  Sebastien Bassong – a proven Premier League defender, and a former Player Of The Season for Norwich – was out in the wilderness until Neil took charge, but in the Play-Offs we saw Bassong back to his best.  Steven Whittaker has long been thought of as something of a weak point by Norwich fans, but when I saw him at Wembley he looked Premier League quality.

Unfortunately – and it pains me to say this – the same cannot be said for Russell Martin.  To be fair to Martin, centre-back isn't actually his favoured position – but although he has been a great servant to the club and a fantastic Captain all season, he has been culpable for some of the mistakes which have cost us.  Think back to the Play-Off Semi-Finals against Ipswich, and ask yourself whose poor clearances led to Ipswich's equalising goal at Portman Road.  We can't afford these sorts of slips against Premier League opposition.  This is why I feel another dedicated, quality centre-back to partner Bassong would be a worthwhile investment.

Who should be we get?  This is where, whatever you suggest, you get a load of stick from other football fans for being either unrealistic or unambitious (or sometimes, even, both), or just for not knowing what you're talking about.  Personally, however, I quite like the idea of Steven Caulker from recently relegated QPR.

The striker position is a more contentious one.  My opinion is that we already have some good forward players in Cameron Jerome, Gary Hooper and Lewis Grabban.  I think most people would agree with this.  But after that, it gets a bit tricky.  What is to be done, for example, about club record signing Ricky Van Wolfswinkel – currently on loan at Saint-Étienne in France?

Van Wolfswinkel is unfortunate in that he has come to symbolise everything that was bad about the disastrous 2013-14 Premier League campaign, which ultimately ended with Norwich being relegated to the Championship.  He arrived at the club with a lot of hype, and an enormous price tag, but ended up scoring only one goal on the opening day of what was otherwise an injury-blighted, disappointing season.  The case against Van Wolfswinkel rests entirely on this statistic – one goal in a whole season is poor for a player supposed to be an élite striker.  The obsession with this statistic is, however, wilfully short-sighted and – I think – slightly unfair.

I think it is worth giving Van Wolfswinkel a second chance in the Premier League.  It is true that his scoring record in what is so far his only season in the division is pitiful, but this doesn't tell the whole story.  I don't think it is simply the case – as some Norwich supporters have suggested – that Van Wolfswinkel simply "isn't good enough" for the Premier League; his 2013-14 season was compromised from the start by the pressure of stepping into the shoes of club legend and former talismanic striker Grant Holt – and he was further hampered injuries, and then by being rushed back into first team action too soon after injury, and then by ongoing confidence issues caused by being an obvious focal point for fan's frustrations during the season as he struggled to live up to the almost unreal levels of hype which accompanied his arrival at the club, and as the rest of the team floundered around him.

We have already seen that players such as Whittaker and Bassong have been revitalised under Alex Neil – I think Neil is a tactically astute manager, but also a manager who can handle people, and who has shown himself to be capable of getting the best out of players, and he would be able to work this magic on Van Wolfswinkel too.  With his confidence back, and in a somewhat less high-profile a rôle as an impact substitute or as a second striker playing off (say) Cameron Jerome, the dutchman may yet have a part to play in the Norwich City story.  It's worth a shot.

We should also, however, buy another striker.  There are clamours to discover "the next Michu" – a previously unknown player from outside the usual hunting grounds who turns out to be a revelation in the Premier League.  Unfortunately, the example of Michu shows what a gamble this can also be, considering his fall from grace after his first dazzling season with Swansea – an obscure player might turn out to be a twenty-goal-a-season bargain of the century, but could just as easily be another big flop.

My opinion is that it's better to buy a proven striker with a good track record at the highest level – but someone who is possibly coming towards the end of their career.  In the much the same way that, for example, Samuel Eto'o ended up at Everton after an illustrious career at Champions' League clubs.  Of course, we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves if we start comparing Norwich even with clubs like Everton, in terms of what we can afford when it comes to buying a striker – but there must be someone around who was previously a top-class player, who's getting on a little and wouldn't get a look in at the big clubs now, but who's looking to play one or two more seasons of football and could still do a decent job?

One name that's been mentioned a couple of times is Luca Toni.  He's thirty-eight now, but after a career playing for some of the biggest names in club football, the Italian has shown he can still score goals for mid-table Verona in Serie A.  Would they perhaps be willing to sell – or loan – him?  Would he be willing to come?  Who knows!  But it's got to be worth a try.

What if Norwich don't go up?

With three games left in the Championship this season, Norwich sit second in the table, one point off Bournemouth (who are top); promotion is entirely within our grasp, and our fate is in our own hands. Things are looking good.

So, ever the gloomy realist, my mind has turned to thoughts of what will happen if, from this position of strength, we fail to win promotion to the Premier League.  If we stay in the Top Two, where we currently are, automatic promotion will be ours and everything will be straightforward – but if we slip only a small way into third (which, in a league as tight as this, is eminently possible), we are faced with the unpredictability of the Play-Offs, where anything can happen and where there are no second chances.  Even now, it's not impossible that we will still be in the Championship next season.  So, what happens then?

Well, hopefully: nothing.  We've got a good thing going here – even if we don't achieve our stated aim of promotion to the Premier League, we must do everything we can not to mess that up!

Alex Neil has done a fantastic job since taking over at Norwich in January, and almost all Norwich fans are now giving him the credit he fully deserves for our recent good form.  Despite this, I fully expect to see a slew of 'sack the manager!' posts on social media if, for whatever reason, we don't go up this year.

Neil's record at Norwich currently is: Played 19; Won 14; Drawn 3; Lost 2.  That's a 73.68% win percentage – and 89.47% of games unbeaten.  Those are some pretty remarkable statistics.

On top of that, we have an excellent squad who – bar a few blips across the season – have worked brilliantly together, shown true team spirit, and played some excellent football.

Overall, we're doing a lot of things right, and should we fail to be promoted this season the call should not be for radical change, but to try and preserve what we already have, and everything that is good about it.