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t is not every week that, as a journalist, you feel strongly enough about the performance of a team to go and seek the manager out afterwards. Norwich City demanded that, for a display full of vigour, energy, intelligence and, more than anything, the kind of progressive football that supporters want to watch these days.

Daniel Farke’s team had scored three times and upset a side that was favoured to win the title. Farke seemed ecstatic and talked with the innocence and intelligence of an excited exchange student. “I’m thrilled,” he said. “The lads delivered in a difficult and complicated game. It’s important we enjoy these kind of results.”

Teemu Pukki had scored and Emi Buendia had been outstanding. Farke looked genuinely surprised when I went over to talk to him and said how impresssed I was with his team’s style. “Thank you, that is very kind of you,” he said. “I’m very pleased you liked the way we played. It was an amazing game today.”

There was another hand shake, another thank you and then he walked out of the Howard Wilkinson suite, tucked away to the side of the main stand at Elland Road.

It was February and Norwich had just taken Leeds United apart. They moved top that day, on the first Saturday in February, earlier this year, on goal difference, ahead of Leeds.

By the time the season had finished, Norwich had scored 93 league goals and amassed 94 points, 11 more than Leeds. Pukki had scored 29 goals to finish the season as the division’s top scorer.

It has been curious then to watch the level of surprise as Norwich have beaten Newcastle United and Manchester City, scoring three times on each occasion.

It speaks perhaps of the arrogance of the Premier League to not check more regularly about what lies beneath. Pukki and Tammy Abraham were the Championship’s top scorers last season with 54 league goals between them. It is now known that Pukki arrived for nothing from Brondby in the summer of 2018, but his was not a signature that clubs were clamouring for in the summer. That still seems strange. Abraham would probably not even be playing for Chelsea without the transfer embargo at Stamford Bridge.

The two have scored 13 Premier League goals already and sit joint-first and second in the scoring charts. Norwich and Farke, who was a reserve team manager in Germany before moving to Carrow Road, are picking up much praise for the style of their play. This is not new. Nor is it that Harry Maguire honed his talents in the Championship with Sheffield United — although he had to play 166 times for Sheffield Untied and captain the team in his teens, before Hull made a move, or that Andy Robertson did the same at the KCOM Stadium.

In the summer the Premier League clubs did gently fish the league beneath them. Southampton signed Che Adams, Sheffield United moved for Oli McBurnie and Neil Maupay went to Brighton, and there was not much change from £60 million for the trio.

The Championship was the third-most watched league in world football in the 2016-17 season. Somehow, however, the television deal the Football League signed in November last year with Sky Sports amounted to £595 million for five years, or just £119 million per year between 72 clubs (and that is without mentioning the hugely controversial red button service).

However, this is not a piece about the financial mismanagement. That is for another day.

It is about the failure to continually recognise the quality bubbling away beneath the Premier League. Marcelo Bielsa received more media interest because one of his coaches spied on Derby County than he has for the transformative style of football he has introduced at Elland Road.

There is much to admire in the second tier of English football. Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday are bigger clubs than at least eight of those in the Premier League. The top flight could do with them.

Norwich have been playing wonderful football for well over 12 months, but the surprise that greeted their victory over Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City told you that most are too blinkered to even look.

Posted By: DrDublin on September 18th 2019 at 13:20:51

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