How are Norwich City fans supposed to make themselves heard?

It was a thoroughly miserable afternoon, starting with another flaccid performance which generated a strong but understandable crowd reaction and ending with the smell of burning bridges drifting across Carrow Road after some clearly heartfelt but ill-considered comments from Dean Smith. 

Since the sacking of Daniel Farke (and for the record I’m not in any way suggesting that that decision was incorrect), it really does feel that the club has lost its way. 

After more than a year of Smith’s management there is still no identifiable style on the pitch, with repeated unconvincing performances from a squad that appears to contain enough quality to be doing considerably better, yet his reaction to another awful home performance was to direct his ire towards the fans, even as his captain Grant Hanley was empathising with their discontent. 

Equally, off the pitch the club seems to have become increasingly introspective, apparently based on a belief that much of the criticism that it has received has been unjustified, and therefore can and should be ignored, and the critics themselves ostracized. 

That outlook seems to be in direct contrast to the ethos set out at the last reboot of the club as this quote from Stuart Webber in a 2017 interview with the Along Come Norwich supporters’ group illustrates: 

“I don’t want to speak out of turn here, but at the club if there’s something we need to do better – tell us. If we need a better song to run out to get people going, we need to be really open minded as a club, and I’ve said this to the board. Let’s strip it all back - anything goes, let’s be open minded and interact with the people who matter - the supporters out there. They’re the stakeholders in this and we have to listen.” 

Those stakeholders were very clear about how they felt on Saturday but is anybody listening now? 

In fairness, Smith is perfectly correct in saying that a small section of the fanbase has been willing him to fail since he arrived, but he ignores the fact that the vast majority of us wanted him to succeed and got behind him, while seeing no real attempt from the manager to connect with the fans. 

However, the suggestion that frustrated supporters shouldn’t be booing completely misses the point that this is pretty much the only way that they can express their discontent. What does he see as an alternative; that they should go home quietly and write a stiff letter of complaint? 

What should concern Smith, and indeed everyone at the club is the fact that the booing was as widespread throughout the ground as I’ve heard for many years and the number of people involved in the mass exodus after Blackburn’s second goal was absolutely shocking. 

Dean Smith turned on Norwich City supporters after they vented their frustration during the defeat to Blackburn (Image: Focus Images)

I’m certainly not a fan of booing or the demonisation of individuals but City’s dreadful home form since their early season successes has been damming up increasing levels of frustration that were always likely to burst at some point. 

I’ve seen suggestions that fans shouldn’t criticise the incessant passing across the back four because City did that under Farke, but that misses the point that it had purpose under the German because City could play through opposition presses whereas now they seem totally flummoxed by them. 

Of course the fans expect more, and why is that wrong? Ultimately, long after Smith and everyone else has moved on we will still be here, because for us it isn’t a job, it’s something that’s in our blood. 

I appreciate that it hurts to be criticised, particularly so publicly, but the pain that we feel as we see the club we love losing its direction is just as hard to take.