You know the entertainment was in short supply when the post-match words of David Wagner and Alex Neil stirred the emotions more than a drab Championship deadlock.

Neil’s spiky observation regarding his old club’s approach to grimly earning a point which kept them in the play-off conversation - albeit whispering quietly in the corner as the likes of Luton and Middlesbrough stand to attention at the front - appeared to hit a vein with many Canaries’ fans.

The man who once grabbed a set of under-performing Norwich players by the neck, and dragged them on a glorious march that in just a few short months ended in Wembley play-off glory, conceded his surprise at Norwich’s apparent desire to stick rather than twist against his current team.

Neil talked about the DNA of his old club, and how he very rarely had seen any Norwich side pitch up in the Championship looking to have what they hold. It was a jarring assessment that cut to the heart of why this season has felt a struggle between expectation and reality.  

But for Angus Gunn’s defiance, even that would have proven elusive. Wagner had fresh injury problems to navigate, with Adam Idah and Onel Hernandez added to a growing casualty list, and a Stoke team under Neil who appear to be moving in a forward direction.

Yet the German’s own post-match analysis appeared to read the press room that Neil had vacated only a few moments earlier.

Wagner, unprompted, offered a revealing glimpse into the mood and the mindset around the squad’s mini training camp, between that lacklustre midweek Huddersfield draw and the same again in the Potteries.

Essentially Wagner and his coaches have sought to draw a proverbial line between where this journey started, and where it needs to end. The horizon has narrowed from vaulted ambitions under Dean Smith last summer to target a third consecutive automatic promotion from the second tier.

The Pink Un:

Now it is about emulating Neil’s previous feat in 2015, or more recently the superb season Wagner plotted at Huddersfield that ended in play-off joy for the Terriers.

‘We do not need to wait another year to try. We can still get to the Premier League, but it requires a shift in the mindset of everyone connected to the football club. Even if a lot of people thought at the beginning of the season automatic promotion is a target.’

That was the gist of Wagner’s words. In such a context, and set against a backdrop of fresh injuries, a point earned through sweat and toil rather than any genuine midfield control or attacking edge was a step in the right direction.

For the Norwich head coach it actually illustrated his words have landed, and in the defensive effort woven around Gunn’s composed shift there was something to build on for the run in.

But with Sheffield United, Middlesbrough and Blackburn to come in short order, the other side of this international break, it requires a considerable leap of faith to contest since the high watermark of his reign at Millwall this group have not stalled.

Put Neil to one side of the equation, and go even further back to another Scot who had a galvanising impact on the fortunes of the football club.

The alchemy Paul Lambert produced, in that uplifting rise from League One to the Premier League, was built on two commodities he would reference at every suitable opportunity – fans and players.

Supporters are the one constant; passing a love for Norwich City down through the generations. Players come and go, and when you get a collective with the quality and the spirit, and the right people to guide them, you can turn dreams into reality. If only for a fleeting season or two before the natural order of modern football reasserts itself.

Lambert was right. It is about players. It has always been about players. Neil himself has since reflected on his own City demise and misplaced loyalty to a group who had gone to the well once too often.

Now it is about these players in green and yellow.

Wagner, and his coaches, can instruct and they can seek to inspire, but when the Championship season resumes against the second-placed Blades it will be down to the players.

Can this squad, under Grant Hanley’s direction, rouse themselves to fend off a clutch of clubs now looking to overhaul them, as well as displace a Luton or a Millwall or a Blackburn in that top six?

To watch how listless and how inhibited Norwich have performed over these past few days - in the majority of the games against Sunderland, Huddersfield and now Stoke - would suggest it is beyond them.

But that was the crux of Wagner’s message after Gunn’s obdurate display on Saturday. What has gone is in the past. Shed the baggage and leave the post-mortems until the summer. There is still a shot.

We are about to find out if this set of players believe it themselves.