Thrashed. Another Premier League defeat. Another five goals shipped. Another one that’s passed without scoring.

I certainly didn’t expect Norwich to beat Manchester City. In fact, I was fairly certain they would lose and joked that ‘if they keep it under five they will have done well’ when talking to people about the game in the days leading up to it. In the end even that was optimistic as the champions ‘ran riot’, as one broadcaster put it, at the Etihad.

The first game of the season was all about the long-awaited return of a full house to Carrow Road. Losing to Liverpool didn’t matter. City essentially had a free pass, with a squad containing several new faces coming off the back of a disjointed, Covid-hit pre-season. To be fair to them, they played quite well and there were promising signs for the future.

It’s not like that promise has gone after Saturday’s thumping. It was just so depressingly familiar. A punch to the gut. Reality giving us a slap across the face and a scolding for daring to dream. We are gradually returning to normality after the pandemic and it seems Norwich taking a beating at one of the big boys is very much the norm.

The Championship is more fun than the Premier League. I have said it before and I am not alone in my belief. We play more often (four more home games for the price of your season ticket), we win more often and we don’t avoid the highlights programme for most of the season. But I’m not about to say that I will just accept another Norwich relegation, which as far as the bookies are concerned is a nailed-on certainty.

The whole point of the Championship is to get promoted. The reason why it produces such excitement is because of the lengths the teams in it will go to reach that promised land of Premier League riches. Perhaps Norwich fans romanticise it so much because we’ve found it relatively easy to get out of it in the last decade or so. If we were, say, Derby – who haven’t gone up or down from the second division since being relegated with a record low Premier League points total in 2008 – we might feel differently about it. I also heard of one team in Suffolk who spent the best part of two decades stuck in the Championship before leaving it at the wrong end.

Norwich’s yo-yo nature has made us something of a laughing stock amongst fans of other clubs. Our promotion last season was met with sighs by many of them, describing it as boring, pointless and a waste of time. They ask: what’s the point of the same old teams like Norwich going up when they’ve got no intention of staying there?

That’s where they are wrong. No one gets promoted to the Premier League and just accepts relegation. This myth that teams cash in on a single season in the top flight is ridiculous – the sudden drop in revenue that comes with relegation offsets the financial gains from going up in the first place. Norwich’s refusal to risk bankrupting the club in pursuit of mid-table mediocrity is criticised by many modern football fans, who think it’s great that a team can spend £100m on a 25-year-old bloke from Birmingham who is best known for drawing fouls, but it should be applauded. For most true supporters, merely having a club to go and watch is more important than which division they are playing in.

Norwich must stay up. I don’t want fans of other clubs laughing at us anymore. I don’t want this cycle of going up, getting relegated and rebuilding to become never-ending. There is a way for a club run the way that we are to become established in the top flight. We have to get it right this time.