Paddy Davitt delivers his Blackburn verdict after Norwich City slumped to another Carrow Road defeat.

1. Comedy of errors

What a sad, pitiful state of affairs. When ironic home cheers greet a first shot of any substance just past the half-hour mark from Hwang Ui-Jo you know things are bad.

When Marcelino Nunez is curling corners straight out of play it is bad. When Gabby Sara’s stoppage time strike triggered mocking home chants of ‘we’ve scored a goal’ you know it is bad.

When Shane Duffy goes walkabout for Rovers second goal, Sara fails to even sense the impending danger from Tyrhys Dolan for the opener and when Blackburn’s third is a counter from Norwich’s own attacking set piece you know it is bad.

When that second Rovers goal hit the back of the net the toxicity from the terraces coalesced in demands for David Wagner, the board and Stuart Webber to go, in that order.

It was mutinous but then it was replaced for the majority of the time that was left by what felt a general acceptance of their team’s fate. Bar the odd sporadic repeat of calls for change and some fury briefly at the players as they apologetically circled the pitch at full-time. Which is worse.

Norwich sit 17th in the Championship standings after an eighth league defeat in 11, but the fall will be much steeper if this malaise is allowed to persist.

Zoe Webber’s matchday column called for solidarity and understanding around injuries to key players. But that long since served as mitigation. On the pitch they resemble a rabble. Poorly coached, lacking in any structure or pattern. Off it, they appear to be in denial.  

2. Exit door

That reaction when Blackburn’s second went in, directed towards the outgoing sporting director, cut to the disenchantment from large swathes of the City fan base with an individual who appeared to be a footballing visionary in the good times, but is now the source of all the ills.

Although pictures of the directors’ box taken during this game suggested the man himself was not in attendance.

Plenty have already assessed his legacy, before he departs officially ahead of Ben Knapper’s arrival later this month. A handover which you can measure in days rather than perhaps the end of year timetable hinted at by Wagner following the draw at Coventry last month.

The bulk of £5.7m for infrastructure projects, outlined in the latest set of published accounts, will see the newest phase of the Colney transformation add a recovery hub. That training ground overhaul may prove Webber’s abiding legacy.

But it will be some years before it provides a lasting dividend. Most will judge his work on the pitch, in the squad makeovers and the work in the transfer window, or even the financial state of play for the club as a whole, and draw a parallel to when he first walked through the door to inherit a mess in 2017.

That is not all on Webber but he was the football figurehead and the chief architect of that Daniel Farke experiment, which stands like a beacon and now a monument to a bygone era in the current turmoil.

The churn in head coaches, the lurch away from a clear, defined playing style and the failure to generate significant sums to prop up the self-funded model, from the point of Emi Buendia’s departure in 2021 to Max Aarons this past summer, are all on Webber.

They are still trying to sift through the wreck of the 2021 transfer window, ahead of a second tilt at the Premier League. A bloated wage bill and, for Norwich, large fees for little tangible return. Either on the park or in re-sale value.

He might rightly point to the £30m plus impact of the pandemic on a football club who live hand to mouth.   

But one of his mantras from those early optimistic days was to leave his successor a better hand than he picked up. Better not to canvass the majority of those who trooped away from Carrow Road on Sunday.

3. Bank of America

Norwich City’s latest set of accounts paint a bleak picture of club mired in debt.

It would take significant amounts of column inches and accountancy qualifications to unpick every strand beyond the headline figures. A pre-tax loss of £27m, debt (or loans, borrowings or whatever other label you are comfortable with) in the region of £96m, in the opinion of football finance expert Kieran Maguire.

Those inside the building would point to a set of gloomy numbers, as of June 2023, as merely a snapshot of an ever evolving picture.

There is a final tranche of parachute payment from Premier League relegation in 2021, and that £17m or so transfer surplus from the past summer to factor into the current financial period.

But what is absolutely clear now is the growing reliance on US sports tycoon Mark Attanasio, and his Norfolk Holdings vehicle which, collectively, appears the back stop to a bleak balance sheet.

Dramatically reduced revenue streams, principally from the hefty contraction in top flight broadcast income, will merely heighten the reliance on the soon-to-be confirmed joint minority shareholder and his circle.

Attanasio’s sporting background with Milwaukee Brewers was one of the early alluring features to the initial courtship. But it is his successful financial career that most City fans now surely hope acts as a bridge to a turnaround.

With the Premier League tap off, those shaping the direction of travel in the City boardroom, and the executive committee, know it is simply unsustainable to be paying in the region of £5m, net, annually in interest on loan repayments.

It is not only on the pitch, and under the new direction of Knapper, where it requires clear-headed, consistent and firm leadership.

4. A start

Much like Kellen Fisher the previous weekend at Sunderland, Jaden Warner may have mixed emotions at making his league debut. The young centre back has had to sit and watch from afar, since encouraging signs he could step up with a composed League Cup outing at Fulham.

You felt for him as the carnage unfolded in that opening 15 minutes alongside an experienced player in Duffy, who should have been able to guide him through. But City’s older heads have been unable to halt the decline.

Whoever is calling the shots in the dug out as this season unfolds from here must see it is in players like Fisher, like Warner, like Borja Sainz and Rowe who can offer something fresh, something new, something optimistic and forward-looking.