Canaries continue backwards movement

I am not going to continue the argument about what has been going on at Carrow Road or - more importantly, for my money - at Colney since those wonderful days of the first half of 2004.

am not going to continue the argument about what has been going on at Carrow Road or - more importantly, for my money - at Colney since those wonderful days of the first half of 2004.

Some people think I have already said far too much in previous columns or in a TV interview I was asked to give a few months ago.

My view about what I see as the footballing decline of the club I love upset a number of fans, a senior member of the coaching staff and a couple of executives who sit in the boardroom.

I am not including the chairman, who disagreed with me when I told him that since promotion to the Premiership I considered the squad to be poorer; nor the vice-chairman, who - after the last annual meeting - when discussing the troublesome right-back position, said to me: "Do not be so bloody ridiculous, man."

To my critics, I want to quote Nigel Worthington from Wednesday's EDP. Referring to our opponents after the Reading game, he said: "They were bright, they were lively and they showed true quality, and we simply couldn't compete with them. It took me back to where we were a couple of years ago, and we have got to get back to that."

Those 40 words say exactly what many City fans have thought but what others have struggled to come to terms with - we are going backwards.

To those who believe that everything is fine at our club - and, indeed, to those of us who were told we were looking at the big picture through the "wrong end of the telescope", to quote chairman Roger Munby - Worthington's words were sobering.

Let us hope that Robert Earnshaw will quickly become a fans' favourite. A smile on everyone's face is badly overdue.