Canaries slide into trouble

As recently as at the turn of the year, Norwich City appeared to be the one club in the Championship whose season was already - the FA Cup apart - as good as over. Out of contention for a place in the play-offs, the Canaries also seemed in no danger at all of slipping into a relegation battle: all of which suggested manager Peter Grant would have the opportunity to experiment over the remainder of the campaign, blooding younger players and those signed during the transfer window with a view to kicking on and making his mark on the club in the years ahead.

But such is the cut-throat nature of this league, results can have a nasty habit of turning an apparently comfortable looking run-in into something rather more fraught: and really, given Norwich's notorious habit of collapsing in the months after Christmas, this correspondent should have known an awful lot better. Capitulation at home to Plymouth Argyle quickened fans' pulses a little, but it was the long-term injury to leading scorer Robert Earnshaw which really began to set alarm bells ringing. And if the prospect of a grim struggle to avoid the drop still seemed unlikely even then, it certainly does not now: Tuesday night's defeat by Wolverhampton Wanderers means only one thing. With a record of just nine points accrued from the last 36, four points off the bottom three and a mere seven off bottom spot altogether, Norwich City are in trouble.

As a result, City now face two huge matches which will define the rest of their season. A minimum of four points from fixtures at home to Leeds United and away to Luton Town will keep their heads above water, and allow the fans to breathe a lot more easily; but two points or fewer will signal a frantic scramble to avoid what would be a calamitous and unthinkable plunge into English football's third flight. Defender Jurgen Colin has insisted that the side are too good to go down: but make no mistake, if it can happen to Manchester City, Sheffield Wednesday and Nottingham Forest, and look like happening to Leeds, it can most certainly happen to Norwich too.

Quite how the Canaries ended up in this mess needs little retelling, with the consequences of Delia Smith's board's chronic dithering throughout last season, and especially the disastrous lack of signings during the summer, now coming dramatically home to roost. It remains wholly unfair to blame Grant for such a state of affairs: indeed, one wonders if he can believe how a club which beat Manchester United only twenty-two months ago could have a squad so frighteningly lacking in quality and especially in numbers now. In a nutshell, clubs which fail to plan for the future and enter a season with a dangerously thin squad invite the injury-plagued scenario which has unfolded at Carrow Road over recent weeks: a division above, Newcastle United have done wonderfully well to remain in the calm waters of mid-table despite fielding extraordinarily inexperienced line-ups over the last few games, but their success has been very much the exception to a time-honoured rule.

With Jason Shackell, the club's best central defender, and the talismanic and probable Player of the Year, Dion Dublin, joining Earnshaw on the sidelines, Grant has at least been able to bolster his side's chronically understaffed and insipid midfield by recruiting Mark Fotheringham and Simon Lappin as the window slammed shut yesterday. Neither signing is particularly exciting, but with the club light years removed from the intent signalled by a succession of loan and permanent captures during 2003/4, the manager is clearly working within extremely tight constraints, and will have to gradually build a team in his image the hard way: and in any case, Lappin especially arrives amid rave reviews from his previous club, St Mirren.

Moreover, one confidently assumes Fotheringham will prove a vast improvement on Carl Robinson, whose apparently imminent transfer to Major League Soccer side, Toronto, will not exactly be greeted with dismay by most supporters. In many ways, Robinson has epitomised much that has been wrong with the club over the past two seasons: making a rod for his own back by notoriously insisting that it would be promoted this year, but continually failing to live up to the game he happily boasted about off the pitch. Indeed, the fact that he has played unusually well in his past two appearances against Wolves and at Blackpool having plainly already been given permission to travel to Canada for talks says it all: for whatever reason (attitude being this writer's strongly-held suspicion), he just never fitted in during his time in Norfolk.

Fotheringham and Lappin are, of course, both Scots, and signings of similar ilk can surely be anticipated in the summer as Grant makes use of his contacts north of the border. Jim Duffy, formerly manager of Dundee and Hibernian, and briefly Director of Football at Heart of Midlothian, is also being linked with the club in some form of coaching capacity: but while he is and has always been an engaging thinker and talker on the game, and while long-time assistant Canary boss Doug Livermore has failed to inspire confidence for some considerable time, Duffy's arrival would certainly not fill this supporter with much enthusiasm. He has always been a highly rated coach, but would it really be advisable to appoint someone who led both Hibs and Dundee to relegation, and whose short spell assisting Graham Rix at Tynecastle was notable only for the desperately poor quality of football produced by the stuttering Jambos?

The role of assistant managers is often vastly underestimated by supporters: but many believe Brian Clough was never quite the same after falling out with Peter Taylor, Jim Jefferies' Hearts went into decline following Paul Hegarty's departure in order to pursue his own managerial ambitions, and Nigel Pearson, whose work at West Bromwich Albion under Bryan Robson was very highly regarded by most Baggies' fans, has surely had a major impact in Newcastle's revival over recent months since his arrival there in November. If Livermore, who cut a deeply uninspiring figure at the club's recent AGM, and about whom the necessity to be put out to pasture was apparent to many fans just as their faith in Worthington's abilities began to wane, is to be replaced, it is imperative that Grant makes the right choice: and especially, that his board gives him every resource in order to do so. Far too many cheap options have been taken by the club for the best part of three years now, and as the old saying goes: if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

All the fans can do now is hold their breath, and truly get behind the team this weekend against Leeds. Such would be the financial consequences, relegation is simply not an option; but such is the chronic lack of confidence running through the side, the players need all the help they can get. It's up to the supporters - whose loyalty has been astonishing, and is apparently remarked on by observers the length and breadth of the land - to unite, once again show their worth, and roar the team on. There is still the chance that a heartstopping final few months of the campaign can be averted, and that Grant's new signings can settle in amid relative calm: but results simply must now be forthcoming, if an already dispiriting season is not to descend into something truly frightening.