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“The next step is to become a really established Premier League club, we want to become a permanent member. We are not naive, we know we aren’t fighting for the Premier League title but we want to develop the club from season to season. If you would guarantee me right now, here is a letter and if you sign you will finish in 17th position this season, I wouldn’t sign it.”
Daniel Farke was right to be ambitious last July. Norwich City’s relegation in 2019-20 was not viewed as failure but part of a process. It helped that Burnley had done the same under Sean Dyche: promoted in 2013-14, relegated in 2014-15, a subsequent high turnover of players to build a squad using parachute payments and Premier League broadcasting revenues and then consolidation after their second promotion. Perhaps the best way to avoid becoming a yo-yo club is to temporarily accept that you must become one.
If that was the plan, Norwich failed spectacularly to pull off the last part. This relegation does deserve to be treated more harshly than their last for three specific reasons: 1) They knew what was coming having already experienced Premier League football recently. 2) They have come nowhere near close to staying up (Norwich were outside the bottom three after one of their 38 league games). 3) The bottom of the Premier League contained some woefully under-performing clubs this season. Norwich got one extra point than last time.
The only excuse, and it might well apply to Fulham, Bournemouth and Watford too) is that Norwich have suffered because of the Premier League’s financial inequalities. Newcastle were haunted in December and yet spent £90m net in the January transfer window; in the last six years Norwich have made a net profit of around £50m on transfers. That doesn’t necessarily demand sympathy, given Norwich benefit from the same inequalities in the Championship, but it is relevant.
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And that’s exactly the point of the criticism. Norwich are a sensibly run club but they could have invested a little more and certainly could have invested a little more wisely if staying up this season was so categorically the aim and 17th would not have been deemed acceptable.
Having barely changed squad ahead of their last top-flight season, Norwich signed 12 players this season and didn’t obviously improve the squad – certainly not enough. They were still reliant upon Teemu Pukki to score goals. They made no permanent central defensive signings last summer.
Farke paid the price with his job; no surprise there – Norwich had to be seen to be doing something. The appointment of Dean Smith made sense and was a coup despite his recent sacking by Aston Villa. But if Smith’s remit was at least partly about taking Norwich up next season rather than keeping them up (that already looked like a futile ambition), it will not be easy. He has a 15 per cent league win ratio and a squad that has got used to losing. It is without question that being relegated for a second time will have a greater psychological impact upon a club.
Norwich can come back again next season. They and Fulham may again pass each other like ships in the night. Five of the last six automatic promotees to the Premier League have been familiar names and Norwich will be amongst the top two favourites again. But no supporter is pretending that it will be easy, nor that Norwich have VIP entry back into the top flight just because they did it before. The nagging suspicion – and apologies to him because he probably disagrees – is that Smith took an incredibly difficult job too quickly after losing his last one.
Player of the season: Teemu Pukki
Best signing: Mathias Normann
Breakout star: Andrew Omobamidele
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