Elvis has left the building

In almost all revolutions, much blood is often spilled along the way. And this, at least in metaphorical terms, has certainly proved the case in the ongoing struggle at Heart of Midlothian: with bells on. First George Burley left having led the club to its best start since the Great War, then its popular and highly regarded Chief Executive and Chairman, Phil Anderton and George Foulkes respectively, followed soon after. And now, just over six weeks after his statement at Riccarton underlining the 'significant unrest' within the dressing room triggered a saga which once more led to the goings-on at Hearts being thrust into the national spotlight, club captain Steven Pressley has been released, with immediate effect.

First things first: both on and off the pitch, Pressley has been a magnificent servant for Hearts. Joining the club in Summer 1998, at a time when the Jambos were expected to kick on from lifting their first piece of silverware in 36 years to provide a concerted, and long-overdue challenge to the Old Firm, 'Elvis' instead had to settle in during a season which saw the team career in the opposite direction, and even flirt with relegation. Played out of position, his form and confidence suffered: but as the side at last started to recover near the season's end, he began to win the fans over with the kind of wholehearted reliability which would become his trademark.

As the club's financial position suffered, the team broke up, cut-backs were made and Chris Robinson's stewardship attracted more and more opprobrium, Pressley remained a constant, becoming a Scotland regular as well as a marvellously consistent player and leader for the club; and last season, when at last it appeared Hearts had a team capable of giving the Glasgow giants a real run for their money, he demonstrated qualities of diplomacy which would have put Henry Kissinger to shame as Burley, Anderton, Foulkes and Graham Rix all abruptly departed, and Vladimir Romanov's handling of things came under increasingly close scrutiny. "Crisis? What crisis?" As long as Elvis was around, the fans could be confident that the club was in safe hands.

Which is why, of course, the fact that even he has been deemed surplus to requirements would appear so alarming: if Elvis can be treated like this, nobody is safe from 'Vlad the Impaler''s wrath. But strip away the emotion from the situation, and take a step back for a moment. How many of those either reading this, or who have expressed contempt for Romanov's 'dictatorship' of the club, could criticise their employers in public and get away with it? How many British football clubs, or even businesses (especially those taken over by foreign investors) make their decisions according to the wishes of the employees, rather than the boss or owner? In both cases, my suspicion would be hardly any.

Moreover, since making his statement alongside Paul Hartley and Craig Gordon on October 27, Pressley has been offered both a new contract and a coaching role at the club, and for whatever reason, has failed to reach agreement with those in charge. We cannot know why this might be: for all we know, the terms offered may have been derisory, and not worth the paper they were written on. But more likely, surely (and I must stress this is purely speculative on my part), is that the club doubted the extent of Pressley's long-term commitment, were aware of his gradually declining performances on the park, and therefore offered him a deal which, while maintaining his services, intended gradually to phase out his playing career in favour of fast-tracking younger, cheaper alternatives into the team: something which Elvis, who remains part of Walter Smith's plans with the national team, could not accept. So negotiations irrevocably broke down, and Pressley has left as a result.

Many, many clubs lose the services of valued players every season for precisely the above reasons: what makes Hearts any different? The answer, of course, is the perception beloved of the media and footballing world in general of the club having become the plaything of a mad, autocratic owner: the kind of view which holds that, were Romanov a political leader in Soviet times, Pressley would have been banished to Siberia for insubordination.

The club must take a great deal of responsibility for losing control of events, and attracting such an extraordinarily negative press: something which was certainly not the case when Hearts were the talk of British football for all the right reasons during the increasingly distant, halcyon days of early last season. If the accounts of Burley, Anderton and Foulkes' exits in Mark Donaldson's excellent new book, 'Believe!', are true, all three departures were essentially unnecessary and avoidable; and at times since then, the judgement of those in charge has been simply appalling: whether ranting about agents or referees, appointing the woefully out-of-his-depth Rix and then leaving him in charge for too long, pedantically conducting a drawn-out argument with the Scottish Football Association when it rejected Eduard Malofeev's coaching credentials instead of immediately sending him off to study for new ones, or in appointing Malofeev to succeed the unwell Valdas Ivanauskas.

When he wasn't either embarrassing himself by waxing unlyrical about media conspiracies, or disgracing himself by laying hands on fourth officials, not-so-steady Eddie presided over a succession of tactically confused, technically maladroit, shambolic performances, culminating in the worst display in an Edinburgh derby in living memory: that Romanov had such apparent confidence in the man took one's breath away. To employ the trusty old phrase, if Hearts fans never set eyes on Malofeev again, it will be too soon.

But is it not also the case that, for all the many mistakes and misjudgements of the past year and more, too many have failed to at least try and view events through the prism of those running the club? Just as fans, media and even senior players have grown increasingly unhappy and alarmed by Romanov's policies, so, surely, the perspective of both the majority shareholder and his close colleagues is of a club whose traditional way of doing things led it to a position whereby, had the Russian entrepreneur not become involved, it would have sold its cherished home and one remaining major asset, and headed for what in all likelihood would have been a long, lingering death in front of dwindling crowds at Murrayfield.

Having bought and saved the club, surely Romanov has the right to expect to do things his way? Moreover, contrary to popular perception, his way is not an untested one either: it has transformed FBK Kaunas into Lithuania's dominant club, and led to such success at the tiny Minsk club of MTZ-Ripo that the British parallel would involve Charlton continually qualifying for the Champions League. So when figures such as Burley or Pressley challenge his way of doing things, Romanov can justifiably point to both his record, and Hearts' desperately troubled recent past, as reasons for sticking to his chosen course, can he not?

What has been going on since Romanov took charge at the club has been nothing less than a clash, perhaps even a war, of wholly different cultures. The Scottish, indeed British, way of doing things is for the manager to have sole control of picking the team, making signings, and dealing with agents; but this is not Romanov's way. For the club to achieve long-term profitability (without which, there is no point in him having invested in the first place), it needs to develop young players of all nationalities through academies in Scotland, Lithuania and Belarus, loaning individuals between clubs in order to minimise cost, and ultimately selling them on for substantial profits in the future, before reinvesting the proceeds in the team. Moreover, it also requires either the redevelopment of Tynecastle, or the relocation of the club to a more cost-effective site elsewhere in Edinburgh or the surrounding areas: with the development of hotels, shops and flats on the site being just as fiscally important as the state-of-the-art stadium which is envisaged.

Romanov is, in other words, following a long-term, properly thought-through plan; but in his view, it requires all those in his employ to be fully onside. And, rightly or wrongly, Burley, Anderton, Foulkes, Pressley and a number of others have been considered either not to be, or to have flat out obstructed the chances of this plan coming to fruition. When Burley wanted full autonomy over selections and signings, it contradicted Romanov's desire to place talented Lithuanians in the shop window for reasons of economics, as well as to develop the game in the land of his birth; and the owner was also deeply unhappy about the manager's desire to deal with a select number of agents he had cultivated during his long, largely successful career, rather than work with the Russian's own network of contacts in Eastern Europe.

And Pressley's unhappiness at the same preference for certain players over others, together with his desire for the traditional, 'British' system of a manager enjoying complete control to be given sway once more, was again perceived as an obstruction: for Romanov grew up during the time of the Soviet Union. Businessmen who prospered in such an environment tend, for reasons of background, not to brook disagreement, and especially, to demand loyalty and unity above all else: when each of the individuals named above threatened this unity, they had to go.

It remains my opinion that the club has been too quick to view perfectly constructive, and potentially beneficial, criticism as simple disloyalty: and especially that it has continually failed to examine the underlying factors causing, say, Burley or Pressley to react as they did. Equally, though, there can be little doubt that those in charge have faced an astonishing degree of scepticism, obstruction and downright opposition from both the Scottish footballing authorities and the media: and while it is regrettable that they have dug their heels in even more obstinately as a result, it is entirely understandable nonetheless.

Certainly, one senses that as far as Romanov is concerned, he is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't: and while his misguided decision to remain silent for a month really just resulted in the club looking arrogant and aloof, his argument would be that he adopted such a stance in order to show that the press would continue to write nasty things about him, no matter what he did. And on that, it has to be acknowledged that he was proved triumphantly correct.

In order for things not to implode completely, there is now a desperate need for a period of real calm and stability at the club. Ivanauskas' return from sick leave has immediately led to a long-overdue upturn in performances, with Hearts' welcome 4-1 victory over Motherwell yesterday not only their first win in ten games, but also a sign that maybe, through no real fault of his own, Pressley had indeed become a problem over recent weeks thanks to his much-publicised comments. Incredibly, despite their miserable recent run, Hearts are still in fourth position in the SPL, and in strong contention for a UEFA Cup place, if not more: and Romanov can already justifiably argue that his way of doing things, however controversial, led to the club's best campaign in 46 years only last season. If he was hugely in credit as recently as May, he has hardly exhausted it less than seven months later.

It is now up to both sides to reach out and attempt to understand one another: the Romanovs to understand why the fans are so worried, supporters to empathise with the owner's desire to change a failed way of doing things in order to deliver long-term success. Just as the first casualty of war is truth, so it might be argued that the first casualty of change is trust: and while it is beholden on the club to repair and regain that trust, it is also incumbent on all those who love Heart of Midlothian not to jump to conclusions, not to react emotively, but to give those in charge the time to put things right. Romanov, indeed, earned that chance by rescuing the club in the first place. Hearts fans will know if and when the time has come to turn their fire on the man who was once considered their saviour: but in spite of all that has happened, and desperately sad as Pressley's departure undoubtedly is, that hour is still some considerable way off.

Ashes to ashes, England to dust

What is it about English sportsmen? Why, when the going gets tough, do they time and again respond with the most stereotyped negativity: an approach which seems almost to invite their demise? The footballers' staggeringly cautious tactics in Germany saw them regarded as the laughing stock of the tournament; the rugby team became ever more narrow and predictable in the years following (and even the games immediately leading up to) their World Cup triumph; and this morning, the cricketers capped their own historically-trademarked propensity to collapse by somehow surrendering a position of apparent impregnability in Adelaide.

Laud Australia's astonishing fightback and the incomparable Shane Warne all you will: but they couldn't have done it without England. A lesson we all need to learn in life is to think and act positively: if we don't believe in ourselves, nobody else is likely to. Around the world, promising young sportsmen learn this earlier than most: for invariably, in order to rise to the top in highly competitive sporting environs, they have to fight for all they are worth. Yet when English sportsmen fight, too often it isn't through a mentality of "the best form of defence is attack", but by adopting a dour, joyless approach which results inevitably in defeat.

The saddest thing about England's capitulation is that, after more than a decade of kow-towing to Australian dominance, they finally appeared to have absorbed this lesson only last year. The bouncer which Stephen Harmison bowled to Matthew Hayden in the very first ball of the 2005 Ashes series at Lord's, and especially the astonishing, tide-turning accumulation of over 400 runs on the first day at Edgbaston, served notice to the opposition: this time, England weren't in the least bit intimidated, and were very much up for the battle. Such was the speed of their run-scoring, they managed to elevate a strategy developed by their opponents' brilliantly inventive captain, Mark Taylor, in the mid-1990s, to still another level: and Australia were shocked almost into submission as a result.

Yet on this tour, and even allowing for the absence of Michael Vaughan, Simon Jones and Marcus Trescothick, they have reverted to type, hoping for things to work out rather than making them happen. Like Nasser Hussain's notorious, craven decision to insert Australia at Brisbane four years ago, Harmison's opening ball in the First Test betrayed nothing but panic; and Duncan Fletcher's misguided belief in Ashley Giles and Geraint Jones suggests he is wedded to the past - what worked in 2005 - rather than the future.

Make no mistake: all sporting teams end up reflecting the approach of their leader. Hussain made England hard to beat, but Vaughan was the man whose creative, original approach took them to another level. In Australia, their bewildering reversion stems from muddled and simply wrong-headed thinking from Fletcher: which started when Andrew Flintoff was preferred as captain to Andrew Strauss. Alec Stewart was hopelessly compromised eight years ago when expected to captain, keep wicket and open the batting: and England only started playing to their potential when he at last handed over the gloves to Warren Hegg, leaving him far more able to focus his energies on scoring much-needed runs. Captaining an international cricket team is so demanding that it invariably exhausts most asked to do the job: which is why the admirable Flintoff, already arguably England's most important player, should never have been asked to lead the side on top of spearheading the attack and batting at number six.

Hardly surprisingly, Flintoff's batting has suffered as a result: and his captaincy has scarcely been inspired either. To make matters worse, the choice of the big-hearted Lancastrian made it almost impossible to go in with a team confident of producing the lower-order runs Fletcher seems so pre-occupied with. Surely no other international team would prefer an innocuous, insipid off-spinner like Giles to an erratic, but far more threatening one like Monty Panesar, and a palpably inferior wicketkeeper like Jones over a genuinely top-quality one like Chris Read, simply because they are thought likely to score more runs? Would Australia drop Glenn McGrath because of inadequacies in his batting or fielding? Hardly. Yet had Strauss been maintained as skipper, England could surely have selected the following side, which would have been more dangerous in attack as well as enjoying a much sturdier tail:

Strauss (capt), Cook, Bell, Pietersen, Collingwood, Joyce, Flintoff, Read, Harmison, Hoggard, Panesar

And of course, there would have been the option of bringing in either James Anderson or preferably Sajid Mahmood for Ed Joyce as and when the conditions demanded it. But no case could possibly be made for playing only four bowlers and making Flintoff skipper: hence the preference of Giles and Jones, which has wasted potentially rich assets in Read and especially Panesar, and done heaven knows what to the morale and motivation of both too.

It is a desperately negative approach, which recalls similarly bamboozling selectorial decisions of the past: notably when England all but threw away any chance they had of regaining the urn by leaving Phil Tufnell at home for the 1998/9 tour. Laughably, they were left with only the moderate Peter Such to face the hosts on a spinners' paradise at Sydney: and although England played magnificently for much of that game, it may not have been a coincidence that the three-to-one ratio of slow bowlers in the two teams (Australia fielding Warne, Stuart MacGill and Colin Miller) was also reflected in the final, wholly justified outcome of that series.

And England's batting collapse on the final day at Adelaide was horribly familiar too. The first Ashes tour I followed was in 1990/1: and in Test after Test of that series, there was a ghastly inevitabilty to Bruce Reid ripping through the tourists' final five or six wickets while scarcely a handful of runs had been added. Similarly, eight years later, England actually competed on more or less equal terms for maybe 90% of the first three matches; but threw it all away with shockingly rapid collapses, after which Australia would put on two hundred plus runs in next to no time, and bat England right out of the game.

Why? One can only conclude that it's all in the mind. However unlikely it must have seemed, the Australian dressing room believed that an implausible victory in Adelaide was, actually, perfectly possible: and the brilliance of Warne promptly made it beckon. England, on the other hand, were gripped by an absurd level of caution. The tourists could have made the game safe on a still excellent surface simply by batting normally yesterday, and adding say 240 runs over the first three hours: yet incredibly, their run rate slowed to that of a snail. The incessant desire to block, block, block simply invited pressure, and made the fall of wickets seem all but inevitable. It would have hardly been reckless for the batsmen to give bad balls the treatment they warranted, and keep the total ticking over: indeed, such a basic approach would never have allowed the pressure to develop as it did.

And bewilderingly, once seven or eight wickets were down, Paul Collingwood - who had a magnificent match overall, and like Matthew Hoggard, certainly did not deserve to be on the losing side - continued to block, and pick up the very occasional single, rather than look to score the quick runs which by this point had become England's only realistic hope. Australia showed how easy it was to score quickly when rapidly chasing their inadequate target down: but then, Australian cricketers invariably think positively. Unlike England's: and with it blindingly obvious to all and sundry that attempting to slow the hosts' run rate down could not possibly suffice, and that the only way of saving or winning the game lay in taking quick wickets, what did Flintoff do but give the desperately limited Giles over after over, employ just one slip, and keep most of the other fielders back, so allowing Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey the chance to pick off ones and twos as a matter of routine?

Confused, indecisive, wrong-headed, negative. So much of it stems from Fletcher: whose continued justification of Giles and Jones' selections after the game make him seem more and more like cricket's answer to Sven-Goran Eriksson. Indeed, one of the great ironies in all this is the sense that, when England's sporting bodies look overseas for guidance, and a bold, new approach, what they get are individuals who become so infected by the caution endemic in English sport that they end up more conservative and more English than the English themselves.

Fletcher's reign as coach is now, surely, almost at an end; and his team now face the prospect of real humiliation. Australia have threatened the prospect of a 5-0 whitewash on a number of occasions over the past eighteen years: but it has arguably never seemed as likely as it does now. Flintoff's men are shell-shocked, and unlike after Brisbane, will scarcely be able to reassure themselves with positives taken out of the game: instead, there is every chance that Adelaide 2006 will, as the wonderful Gideon Haigh writes today, come to torment and fester in English cricketing minds every bit as much as Headingley 1981 did in the heads of Australians. The baggy greens have always been vulnerable when chasing small targets ever since what happened to them at Leeds: and how can England ever feel confident of a first-innings total, no matter how great, being enough after the nightmare they have endured here?

Warne, McGrath, Ponting and company, meanwhile, are cock-a-hoop, and can impose a new, lasting strangulation over the Poms by rubbing their noses firmly in the mire in the three matches which remain. It could all have been so different; it will take a miracle to rescue this unhappy tour now. And until English sport finds the courage to confront its demons, and set out on a bold, new, revolutionary path embracing risk, change, optimism, and sheer enjoyment (a good word, that: for when was the last time you saw an English side in any of the three major sports playing with a smile on its face?) of competition, more woe for the footballers, rugby players and cricketers - and for all of us who love English sport, and yearn for it to succeed in the highest of company - is surely inevitable in the years ahead.

First rule of business: the customer is always right...

... Except, of course, when he isn't: and that certainly seemed to be Peter Grant's opinion in the aftermath of Hull City's late equaliser against his side on Saturday. Admirably honest when publicly criticising his players in his first few weeks in the job, the Norwich City manager went a stage further last weekend in lambasting his own supporters - whose unease during the final quarter of an hour against Hull manifested itself in, at least in the view of the combative Glaswegian, an eerie quiet. And when these nerves apparently transmitted themselves to the team, who promptly threw away two points against a struggling side for the third time this season, it was too much for the manager: who labelled the fans a 'disgrace'.

The initial reaction on messageboards and among fans I spoke to was one of fury at Grant's outburst: in his recklessness, there was a great danger he had lost the faith of the supporters. All of which made Tuesday night's match against Leicester a pivotal moment in the Scot's fledgling managerial career. Had Norwich played as poorly as in their previous two fixtures against Hull and Ipswich, there seemed every chance of the frustration felt by Canaries fans at their side's decline in little more than two years from runaway league champions to an at times desperately average bunch of cloggers boiling over, with Grant bearing the brunt: mercifully, though, City responded to going a goal down with a highly encouraging fightback, three goals, and the maintenance of their position on the fringes of the play-off race. A potential crisis had been averted, and the fans can look ahead to a crucial four games prior to Christmas with optimism, rather than apprehension.

So, was Grant right? Certainly, his choice of words - and in particular, the 'D' word - left a lot to be desired, but could surely be put down to his deep frustration in Saturday's immediate aftermath at two priceless points being lost. But nevertheless, in the view of this fan at least, there was more than an element of truth in what the manager said: for as long as I can remember, Norwich fans have been known throughout the game for our docile, placid nature. Perhaps the worst example I can ever recall was when, less than four years after the Canaries knocked Bayern Munich out of the UEFA Cup, we were humiliated by lowly Barnet in the League Cup: and as I trudged in furious disbelief out of Underhill, one fellow supporter turned to another and simply shrugged, "Ah well, things can only get better".

Any other set of supporters whose side had recently been lording it in the Premiership would, surely, have risen in tumult against the manager, players, perhaps even Delia Smith's board: but not Norwich fans. Indeed, despite the season which unfolded producing some of the club's most pathetic displays in living memory (5-0 at Ipswich, 5-0 at Wolves, 4-0 at home to Charlton, 3-0 down in a must-win Carrow Road game against a hopeless, disinterested Bradford, 3-0 at Grimsby), and City flirting dangerously close with what would have been an unthinkable, catastrophic relegation to English football's third flight, at no point did the fans turn on the man overseeing this shambles, Mike Walker: whose cherished status as the conquering hero who led us to European football in his first spell at the club, and who had bailed us out by reluctantly agreeing to return following Robert Chase's long-overdue departure, spared him any opprobrium. And when he was eventually dismissed once survival had been achieved, most of us felt nothing but sympathy towards him, as well as considerable anger towards the board, whose handling of the Silver Fox' exit left an extremely sour taste in many peoples' throats.

The essential point is this: Norwich are, and have always been, a decent, dignified, family club, and our fans invariably reflect this. But the problem is the self-fulfilling prophecy it creates: with the media patronising us, players invariably treating us as a stepping stone to bigger, more 'ambitious' clubs, the board being gazumped by more ruthless competitors when signings are attempted, and the supporters being admittedly annoyed, but never turning en masse against a manager, Nigel Worthington, who should have been dismissed almost a year before he finally left. And in the utterly cut-throat world which football has become - an environment, indeed, which would make Gordon Gekko blush - such an approach cannot possibly lead to sustained success.

Molineux, St Andrews, the Stadium of Light, Ninian Park, Elland Road, even Turf Moor: all these Championship venues are notoriously difficult to win at, because the supporters create such an unremittingly hostile atmosphere. Admittedly, there is a flip-side here too: Leeds fans, for example, have hardly surprisingly turned on their own team during this miserable season for their once-proud club, and Wolves supporters can be ludicrously fickle: one even going to the trouble of constructing a banner with the immortal words, "You've let us down again!", before his team had so much as kicked off against Norwich in the play-off semi-final second leg four years ago. But while the turnout of Canaries fans at Carrow Road remains magnificent, and second only to Sunderland of any club in the Championship, too often, the atmosphere at the ground is virtually dead, with supporters expecting the team to inspire them, rather than the other way around.

The great frustration is that, over the years, Norwich fans have proved we can do it: the cacophonous, almost-celebratory din which accompanied our gallant UEFA Cup exit in the San Siro in 1993 astonished our Italian hosts, and will remain in the memory of all those who were lucky enough to be there; and similarly, the sensational colour and noise of the enormous turnout from Norfolk at the 2002 play-off final was, according to those in charge at the Millennium Stadium, simply unsurpassed in their experience of overseeing such showpieces. The crescendo which accompanied the team's fightback from three goals down against Middlesbrough two seasons ago has all but passed into club folklore; and the support of the fans never let up on that sad, sad day at Craven Cottage when we were betrayed by a shameful, spineless capitulation by players who proved they were simply not fit to wear the shirt.

Indeed, perhaps it's most accurate to suggest that away from home, when the true hardcore fans gather together, Norwich fans are at our best - but at Carrow Road, all too often it can be the exact opposite. When in recent memory, for example, have we come anything close to matching the fanaticism which Portsmouth fans have all but trademarked since their club's promotion to the top flight: support which must, surely, have played a considerable part in their continued success since? That was what provoked Delia's celebrated half-time rant against Manchester City two seasons ago: for in a crunch, must-win game, and even allowing for the poverty of the team's display in crumbling from a position of strength, too many fans had gone missing in action.

When Grant became manager just under two months ago, many of us demanded he cut through the complacency endemic in the club: a whole new, infinitely more ruthless approach was required for City to have a chance of fulfilling our potential. To that end, it is somewhat rich for supporters to applaud when the pugnacious Scot lays into the players, only to condemn him when he holds the fans to similarly exacting standards: because it's all part of the same thing. Indeed, it is arguable that in our tolerance, patience, and reluctance to lambast the pathetic inertia of the board during, for example, Worthington's final year at the helm, we get the club we deserve: and if only the fans become more demanding, and more hostile to opposing teams, the tired, craven, failed mentality of the club will at last begin to change too.

So while we can bemoan the alarming weakness of the squad, complain that the quality of football isn't what many of us were brought up to expect, and even worry that, should we somehow win promotion, Sunderland's record for the worst-ever season in the Premiership may come under serious threat, we all owe it to Grant and the team to get behind them and help them as much as possible. Whisper it, but in spite of the shambles he inherited, Grant has so far accumulated a highly encouraging seventeen points from nine games: a return which, if continued over the rest of the season, will see us comfortably ensconsced in the play-offs. It's not his fault that the squad is so weak: yet in grinding out four 1-0 wins (two of them away to sides likely to be in the promotion shakeup themselves), he has shown signs of being able to make the best of a highly challenging job.

And in this topsy-turvy, madcap, God-foresaken division, the key is not so much to play champagne football as just, somehow, to get out: you can worry about the rest afterwards. Norwich may have a desperately mediocre team: but we are also just four points off the play-offs, with all things still eminently possible. Simply for getting the team back in the hunt, Grant deserves our support: and if his much-publicised comments result in a determination among the fans never to let up in their encouragement at Carrow Road over the remainder of the campaign, it could yet prove a highly significant turning-point for the better. Time will tell - but when supporters demand an open, direct, honest manager, they can hardly complain when he turns out to be exactly what so many of them called for, can they?