I didn't go to Carrow Road on Saturday. It was the first time I have ever decided to skip a Norwich City home game.

Before, a match without me watching on from my seat in the Barclay would have only occurred due to illness or work.

Yet, I just can't face watching this City team under the management of Dean Smith any longer. Having witnessed the appalling defending in the defeat at Watford on TV, I had declared that I wouldn't go to the Luton game three days later, only to go against my better judgement.

With another insipid display, however, my mind was well and truly made up. I wouldn't go to another home game until he was gone.

By all accounts, Norwich were once again poor for large parts of the Stoke match. There were reports of boredom in the stands. Murmurs of discontent. I’ve seen the goals and they were a tantalising glimpse of what the squad is capable of if they were let off the reins, but if Stoke were anything other than awful themselves it could have been a very different result.

The squad is no better, and in fact is tangibly worse, than it was when Smith took over a year ago. I am fed up watching Grant Hanley pass the ball across the back four at walking pace. Fed up watching Josh Sargent play on the wing, when it's blindingly obvious that he is at his most threatening through the middle. Fed up watching long balls being splayed hopelessly in the direction of Teemu Pukki, a man who has scored so many Championship goals by receiving passes along the ground.

The recently published report makes it clear that promotion is crucial to the continuing financial health of the club, so it is imperative the board acts as soon as possible to give a new manager the time to sort us out.

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For me, the question should not be 'should Dean Smith be sacked?' but rather 'why hasn't he been sacked yet?'. As for a successor, all the talk has been about Russell Martin and I would be open to that, having seen the way he has his Swansea team playing, but I am not convinced he will want to leave them when he has such a good thing going.

As long as the club don't employ Chris Wilder or Steve Bruce, I'll just feel a renewed enthusiasm, as if a fresh breeze was blowing through the corridors of the ground.

Wilder's biblical whining when City beat his Sheffield United team at Bramall Lane in 2017, with the numerous bees in his bonnet ranging from the visitors' bus arriving late to perceived time wasting on our part, has given me a negative view of him ever since.

Bruce's repeated failings at various different clubs do little to inspire confidence that it would be any different with us. Martin certainly appears to be the obvious candidate at the moment - a former City captain, a fan favourite and one who has impressed in his fledgling management career with his style of play and ability to make individual players better.

Perhaps the fact I can only think of one likely replacement is partly why the club have yet to take any action.

They would be foolish not to be considering their options, however.

We are all aware that Norwich City is not a club that traditionally sacks a manager before they feel he has been given enough time, but I argue that these are exceptional circumstances.

It’s not going to get better. I have never seen or heard Carrow Road so miserable. I am not the only one choosing to stay away at the moment. If this season is to be anything other than a damp squib we need a change of direction and a new voice in the dressing room.

Time is of the essence.