I've often been accused of that over the years - the academic thing I mean

I do often write in a peculiarly detached way: no doubt about that. But I kinda think that goes with the territory of living far away: grew up in London, studied at Oxford, moved to Uruguay - and only at UEA for 3 years did I live in Norwich.

So I get where the "he doesn't care about the club" stuff comes from; sure I do. But if my frequent rants on here - and now on air - aren't indicative of passion, goodness only knows what would be tbh.

On your broader point: I'm not slagging off the entire fanbase or something! I like our fans. But do I think we're demanding enough? No way. No way in the world. There's still a cult of Delia amongst many supporters: "Delia give us a wave" v Millwall a few weeks ago; heck, she was even serenaded by the away fans when we lost at Portman Road and headed towards the drop to League bloody One in 2009. Sorry - but that's a joke.

Is everyone guilty of that? No, not at all. But there's a reason she's remained so popular in spite of a whole bunch of frankly insane football decisions throughout her time as joint majority shareholder. There's a reason the scrutiny has almost never been on the board in the way it should've been. And before anyone says "but what choice do we have? She keeps us alive", this never stopped anyone criticising or attacking Chase back during a much, much more successful era. He was unpopular even when we were finishing 3rd in the Prem!

Then I look at my own treatment when simply spelling out the reality as I saw it after Man Utd (a) last season, or Fulham (a) this. The extent of the opprobrium aimed towards me was staggering - yet everything I said came to pass, and it wasn't bloody rocket science either. That wasn't about "how I was saying it" - it was much more that folk just didn't want to hear it, so shoot the messenger was the response instead. I think that probably ties in to the fsith so many have in the board actually.

One other thing. Where do we think Radio Norfolk get many of their callers from? I listened to yesterday's CC; the callers were almost all embarrassing. They frequently are week after week - hence the constant jokes on here - yet they're all Norwich fans too. So either RN keep the same 5 callers who they call up every Saturday - or those fans are as representative as any other.

Again: I'm not tarring the whole fanbase here or anything like it. Any fanbase of any club has a cross-section of all sorts following it. But in our case, I think Delia's got away with it for so long because she's understood much of her support alarmingly well: "Playing the Norwich way / bleeding green and yellow" might not be what you or I want to hear, but it's scary how many other fans just lapped it up. And in that sense, however loyal we undoubtedly are, we get the club we deserve.

Posted By: thebigfeller on January 6th 2015 at 09:03:00

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