Tim Allman, Capital Canaries By Tim AllmanI started the season with huge optimism. We had dodged relegation while playing some attractive football, signed some promising players, and shipped out a number of under-performers from last year.

Tim Allman, Capital Canaries

By Tim Allman

I started the season with huge optimism. We had dodged relegation while playing some attractive football, signed some promising players, and shipped out a number of under-performers from last year.

We had a manager who had respect and contacts in the game, and who had appointed an ambitious assistant who in his time had been more than a decent player. It was all looking so rosy.

But from my view in Block T of the River End upper tier, it's not looking so rosy based on how we played against Derby last Saturday. It was a worryingly bad performance, and led me to have my very own Joe Kinnear moment in Morrisons car park as we made our way back to Norwich station. A fellow supporter was witness to this tirade, and to him, I offer my apologies for the number of new words he learnt in the 30 or so seconds that our paths crossed.

As I know Glenn Roeder, Lee Clark and the players are all avid readers of the Capital Canaries Column, here are a few questions and reminders as regards the health of our football team.

Lee Clark said at the NCISA Forum: “Since I have come to the club you can guarantee one thing,” he said. “The teams that myself and the manager will be involved with for Norwich will never be lambs to the slaughter like that”.

My view of proceedings against Derby was that there are those who will have played much better and with much greater enthusiasm in their careers, and maybe will have stayed on their feet a little longer. I do not want to see that level of performance again from certain players. To Glenn Roeder: In my view our best close season acquisition was Sammy Clingan, He's the sort of unsung hero every team needs, tackling, passing, moving the ball on and holding the midfielder together.

His return from injury coincided with some control in the middle of the pitch, and his presence there in the final 30 minutes would have allowed the more attack-minded players to take the game to 10-man Derby.

So, Glenn Roeder, why did you move Clingan to right back, and replace him with the dropped skipper, which as a good as surrendered control of the midfield to Derby? That switch has made it to No 3 in the worst substitutions and changes I have ever seen a Norwich manager make, and caused my Joe Kinnear moment after the game.

To Troy Archibald-Henville: I can't understand the reason you've not got a game as yet, and after Adam Drury's selection against Derby and it's looking very unlikely that I will ever find out which squad number you have been allocated.

If you fancy a Saturday evening in London after watching City from the stands you are welcome to travel back to London on the train as a guest of the Capital Canaries. I'm sorry your stay in Norwich doesn't seem to be working out too well.

To David Marshall: Put that goal out of your mind. You've been brilliant this season.

To Semmy: Get well soon. We need you back, and our best player against Derby, Crofty, needs his pal back on the right hand side of the pitch.

To everyone else at Colney: You've got a two-week break to improve, hit the ground running at Bristol City, and sort out the why our performances have dipped since the highs at Plymouth and when we played Birmingham off the park at Carrow Road.

I don't want another season like last, but from what I have seen in the last few games, if you don't turn the the corner, I will be visiting a number of new grounds in League One next season.