Norwich City: Pink Un Podcast on Championship play-offs

Paddy Davitt, Adam Harvey, Samuel Seaman and Connor Southwell assembled at popular matchday pub the Fat Cat & Canary to discuss the points haul City will need, the rapidly approaching East Anglian derby, the quality of their Championship rivals and more.

Watch the latest episode of our long-running podcast, brought to you in association with Colman's of Norwich, our read the highlights below. You can also listen to the full audio on your chosen podcast platform.

PD: David Wagner said it after the last home game against Rotherham: at this stage it’s not the be-all and end-all, you want to be there when the dust settles at the end of the season. But I think it is quite big psychologically. They’ve followed it up against Stoke, and now there’s a two-week break.

I would much rather be in Norwich’s position where they know they’re in the top six, rather than Coventry, Hull or Preston, who know there’s no margin for error because they’re playing catch-up. Norwich have gone from being the hunter to the hunted, which is a different mindset, but you get the sense with this group of players, the experience that’s in there, that they won’t be perturbed by that.

It won’t affect them, I don’t think, or really impact them at all. They’ve timed their run perfectly, and now it’s just about staying in the moment, bit of luck with injuries, and hopefully they will now navigate a path to the top six and play-off football.

David Wagner's side are in fine form (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)

SS: They’ll try to see it as a block of games that they can go and attack now. The way that managers often speak about how they set up for these things, you hear them talk about targeting certain numbers of points to attain in busy weeks or exact periods.

They might benefit from that now. We’ve talked a lot about timing, and not giving themselves enough time to run out of steam. At one stage it felt like they might even have peaked slightly early, but they finally broke into that top six with 10 games to go, which feels like the perfect time to do so.

The international break might have taken a little bit of momentum away, but it stems the constant flow of games that meant the likes of Josh Sargent were having to be managed with only the absolute short-term in mind, and it gives an opportunity to rest to players who really need it going into this final block of games.

CS: The average quality of City’s opponents between now and the end of the season is around the 13th mark, which is the kindest run-in for any of the teams in play-off contention aside from West Brom, who are already in a very good position for fifth. Preston are next, then Coventry and Hull.

Mark Robins' Coventry are also well in the race (Image: PA)

But as Bryan Clough said, football’s played on grass rather than paper, and there are a lot of unpredictable factors. Sheffield Wednesday, for example, welcome Norwich to Hillsborough and although they lost 6-0 in their last game, won five of their seven before that. 

Preston have a similar target and could close the gap by beating Norwich, Swansea have improved since Luke Williams went there, Bristol very nearly got a draw against them earlier in the season, Plymouth have a coach under pressure and Birmingham are fighting off relegation. There’s so much still in play, and that’s the case for every team.

AH: It felt like the Stoke result was so big for the mindset of everyone involved, because the one stumbling block even when things have been going as well as they have has been the away form.

Victory at Stoke was City's first away win in over two months (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)

They missed plenty of opportunities in their good run, failing to beat Blackburn and QPR, and they played on your mind a little bit. They’ve got some tough away games to come: Leicester, Preston, even Birmingham on the last day of the season. So that Stoke result felt like a real turning point, another one.

From City’s perspective, they’ve already played a game more than the sides behind them. Those teams have got to squeeze another midweek game in before the end of the season. So Norwich are in the box seat, and I fancy their chances based on the opposition they’ll face.

I think they’ve probably got enough to sneak into sixth place.

PD: If they can get 15 points and add that to the 61 they've already got it takes them to 76, which would have been good enough in five of the last six seasons. I am trying to work out where those five wins are coming from, which is my natural pessimism coming through.

It feels like a lot hinges on the Leicester-Ipswich double-header. It's not that losing both of those would be damaging enough points-wise to rule them out, but psychologically to lose both of those games and therefore all of their momentum would be the nightmare scenario. I'd take three points from those two games, so in other words I'd be happy to lose to Leicester and beat Ipswich.

The East Anglian derby is included in the Canaries' run-in (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd)

To lose both would be big, but conversely, if they do win one of those games I think they're cruising on the way to play-off qualification.

SS: The psychological element of losing to Ipswich would be a lot to get over, but if you take that game as well as the Leicester and Preston ones out there are five left that they will feel they should be winning. If they can win all of those games and then avoid defeat against Ipswich, that for me feels like the simplest route to being in the top six after 46 games.