Canaries drift on: but to where?

The day after it was announced that, from next season, even the bottom placed finisher will receive almost £27m of Premiership prize money as a result of a yet more lucrative global television rights deal, it is surely all the more necessary to remind ourselves of what life continues to be like for the clubs struggling desperately to return to the top flight. Such are the realities of the English game nowadays, when a side suffers relegation, it is imperative it bounces straight back at the first attempt: for the repercussions of failure are invariably harsh and long lasting. Manchester City, Sheffield Wednesday, Nottingham Forest and Queens Park Rangers all either dropped into the third tier or - in the case of the twice former European champions - are still scrambling to climb back out of it, Leeds United look set to emulate them in this unhappy fate, while others such as Coventry City and Derby County have suffered years of interminable toil as they battle to recapture former glories.

Norwich City, too, fell into a six-year malaise of mid-table monotony or worse after falling from the top tier at arguably the worst possible time: 1995, just when English football's modern day economic boom was beginning to gather pace. And sadly, after the Canaries' brief resurgence under Nigel Worthington, history would appear to be repeating itself - with Norwich's spineless second half collapse against Plymouth Argyle last Saturday leaving the side with a pathetic recent record of nine points from the last 33, and beginning to peer anxiously over their shoulders towards the drop zone.

Following Worthington's ludicrously belated departure at the end of September, few City supporters doubted the difficulty of the task facing new manager, Peter Grant: with precious little available to spend, and the club's parachute payments about to run out, it was up to him to make the most of what he had while gradually beginning to build his own team. To this end, striker Chris Brown and midfielder Luke Chadwick have both recently been unveiled, and goalkeeper David Marshall's on-loan capture from Celtic was confirmed only yesterday; with Robert Earnshaw and Youssef Safri likely to depart Carrow Road in the summer, along, surely, with a number of others too.

But for all Chadwick and Brown certainly have genuine talent, and for all Marshall's temporary recruitment will surely help shore up a defence behind whom Paul Gallacher has often looked uncertain for much of the season to date, in many ways, the names of the players brought in are simply a reminder of how far the club has fallen over recent years. To be sure, it is a far cry from when the purchases of Adam Drury, Gary Holt, Mark Rivers and Marc Libbra represented a clear change of strategy and provided the impetus for the club's revival to at last begin in 2001; and even further from when the loan acquisitions of Darren Huckerby, Peter Crouch and Kevin Harper, and especially the permanent purchases of Huckerby, Leon McKenzie and Matthias Svensson took the Canaries over the top and bounding joyfully back into the promised land in 2003/4.

The argument is often made that, however dreadfully disappointing the past two seasons have been, the club is in a far better overall state than when Worthington took over from the hapless Bryan Hamilton a little over six years ago. Take this rather curious recent piece by Mick Dennis: never mind the football, it seems to be saying, feel the quality of the new Jarrold Stand, hotel, restaurant and friendly ticket office staff! But the last time your correspondent glanced at the table, Norwich had fallen three points behind Crystal Palace, the very club Dennis appeared to gazing down loftily upon; and of course, have lost both games against a desperately average Eagles side this season too.

Moreover, while it must be acknowledged that Worthington was charged with clearing out a squad bloated by the acquisitions of some of the most preposterous figures ever to wear the Canaries' colours (step forward Fernando Derveld, Raymond De Waard and Steve Walsh), the club's current squad is not only desperately thin, but alarmingly lacking in quality too. At the back, while the improvement of Jurgen Colin has been one of the season's few pleasant surprises, Drury - once one of the most promising left backs in England, and an integral part of City's success during Worthington's first three full campaigns in charge - has continued a decline which set in during the sojourn in the top flight two years ago, and is plainly struggling for confidence; Gary Doherty gives his all, but still fails to convince; and time has sadly but inevitably caught up with Craig Fleming, who nevertheless must be lauded for his magnificent service for the club over the past decade.

In the middle, Dickson Etuhu shows fitful inspiration, but fails to even approach the consistency a player of his potential influence ought to be capable of, Andy Hughes is wholehearted, but often utterly out of his depth, Carl Robinson continues to be one of the most infuriatingly unreliable players this fan has witnessed, while even Huckerby flits in and out of games, and carries nowhere near the authority with which he bent this division to his will three seasons ago. If it weren't for the marvellous Indian summer being enjoyed by Dion Dublin, and especially the goals of Earnshaw - astonishingly still the Championship's leading scorer in a team which has sunk to 17th place in the table - one wonders where Norwich would find themselves; and with it confirmed only this morning that Earnshaw is expected to be out for several months with a serious groin injury, we are about to find out too.

Does any of the above smack of a club in a completely transformed position compared with the days immediately following Hamilton's ignominious period in charge? Does its most recent set of accounts, the announcement of which was accompanied by the stark warning that, "Failure to win promotion at the end of 2007 will reduce our income by a minimum of £7m following the loss of the Premier League parachute payments. While the club remains in the Championship it will be necessary to balance the cashflow and generate surplus funds for future player acquisitions by selling assets" suggest anything other than a grim future ahead? It must be concluded, surely, that it does not.

Grant, too, is painfully aware of the lack of competition within his squad: as his furious comments following Saturday's miserable defeat amply demonstrated. Doubtless, further new arrivals can be anticipated before the transfer window slams shut at the end of the month: though whether they are of the quality or potential to help propel City back up the league, and provide real hope for the immense challenges which lie ahead, is of course the real question. Moreover, while it would be outrageously harsh to hold the manager responsible for a desperately weak squad inherited through no fault of his own, and created both by the board and his predecessor, after a relatively encouraging start to his spell in the hotseat, it has to be acknowledged that he has failed to convince since: the quality of football has been dreadfully poor at times, the team has often played with little sense of structure, or clearly defined roles, and he has continued to straddle a dangerously fine line between the honesty and directness which initially proved such a refreshing change from the uninspiring dirges offered by Worthington, and simply undermining and alienating a playing staff short not just on numbers, quality or form, but above all confidence as well.

In a nutshell, a manager can only deliver the sort of stinging public broadsides at his players which have already become the pugnacious Scot's trademark if he can be confident of taking his squad with him. Throughout his career, for instance, Martin O'Neill has tended to mix occasional strong criticism of players when clearly warranted with a staunch defence of their performances to the press on many other occasions; but in Grant's case, all too often he seems unable to control his desire to vent his spleen following City's latest disappointment. Describing his players as "very, very weak", and guilty of "passing the buck to everyone else" is a dangerous game to play: partly because it may only be a matter of time before certain amongst his team might begin to ask themselves whether he is failing to take ultimate responsibility as their boss; still more because, as Drury's utterly deflated words following Saturday's debacle bear eloquent witness to, this is a team now woefully lacking in belief or inspiration. If verbal kicks up the proverbial have failed to work so far, what makes Grant so confident that they will succeed now?

Norwich now face four critical league matches which will determine whether they move back into the uninspiring, but at least comfortable waters of mid-table, or begin to be dragged into a relegation battle which surely none of even the most pessimistic of observers deemed to be possible before a ball was kicked back in August. On current form, and even against opponents who have drifted down the league after a remarkable start, it is difficult to see them taking much from this weekend's awkward trip to Turf Moor; and the home match with Wolves, while certainly winnable, doesn't offer much in the way of comfort either. In the potentially disastrous absence of Earnshaw, it are the subsequent two fixtures against Leeds and away to Luton which really stand out: both offer the opportunity to move clear of danger, but equally, one point or fewer from these games could mean big, big trouble ahead.

In spite of all that has been written in this piece, Canaries fans can at least take solace from the lesson drawn from their side's continual toil of the late-1990s and around the turn of the century: namely, that it is simply staggering just how poor a team needs to be, or how shambolic a club's off-field affairs need to become, for a club such as Norwich to be relegated from this league. And however dispiriting this season has undoubtedly become, and even if their top scorer does not kick another ball in anger over the remainder of the campaign, it must be acknowledged that, as yet, Norwich do not conform to the requirements of either category. This observer does ultimately expect the team to stay up: indeed, there are at least six clubs in the division which I still cannot foresee City finishing below. That said, there must be a very real fear that, in the inevitable absence of key players following the cost cutting which is bound to occur in the summer, things could easily get considerably worse: and in any case, the real issue here is just how a club which ran out at Craven Cottage just twenty months ago with its Premiership survival in its own hands found itself in such a position in the first place. And for that, the board are very much culpable.

Nobody doubts how difficult it is for clubs such as Norwich to compete effectively in an era when the gap between the top flight and the rest becomes dramatically wider year-on-year; nor can anybody question either the commitment or good intentions of those charged with leading them to success. But the Canaries utterly failed to make the most of a wonderful opportunity which presented itself to first survive and then begin to establish themselves back in the big time; and worse, at precisely the point when it literally could not afford to take its collective eye off the ball, it did exactly this, with bells on.

This is a club which, in spite of everything, astonishingly continues to attract the third highest average attendances in the entire league: the writer hopes it won't be considered an abandonment of his duty of objectivity to suggest, in the strongest possible terms, that such remarkable loyalty deserves far, far better. But sadly, thanks to the mistakes and inertia of those in charge over the last two years or so, it is increasingly difficult to envisage it being tangibly rewarded, in the foreseeable future at least: indeed, the consequences of the board's collective paralysis are, all too clearly, already being demonstrated.