Relegated Norwich left demoralised after Webberball’s poor return

The news was scarcely well received by many in Norfolk. It should have been welcomed by anyone writing an obituary for Norwich City’s attempt to stay in the Premier League. Their sporting director Stuart Webber is going to climb Mount Everest later this year. It lends itself to comparisons with Norwich’s biennial task. They repeatedly reach base camp, in the form of promotion, before being overwhelmed by altitude sickness, forcing them to retreat to lower levels.

Relegation back to the Championship was sealed on Saturday and signposted from August. Norwich can feel a symptom of modern football, the club owned by well-meaning local millionaires who spend every other season in a world populated by billionaires. They can look a quaint anachronism: Delia Smith is an expert at egg boiling but not at sportswashing. Their supporters may reject the notion they are role models to similar sized clubs who are long exiled from the top flight, partly because their record sixth Premier League relegation feels the most demoralising yet.

Because this season was supposed to be different. Webber described Norwich’s 2019-20 campaign, when they spent a mere £1.2m in transfer fees as “going to war without a gun”. This time, he brought – or bought – the artillery. “The truth is we were the 11th biggest spenders in Europe,” he said in October and if signings were offset by the sale of Emi Buendia to Aston Villa, the bill last summer came to almost £60m, with the potential to rise further if the options to make the loans for Ozan Kabak and Mathias Normann permanent were exercised. Now they will not be.

And if an analysis of the numbers must factor in that promoted clubs need to buy to catch up, the 11th biggest spenders in Europe are the 20th best team in the Premier League. Norwich have 21 points, their eventual tally two seasons ago, with four games against probable top-half finishers to beat it. They have spent a lot to stand still.

If it first appeared a failure of “Farkeball”, with Daniel Farke’s brand of football proving eminently suitable to winning promotion but too open and insufficiently pragmatic to prevent demotion, it is also a failure of Webberball. Webber’s ruthless decision to dismiss Farke was an indication of the ambition Norwich are sometimes accused of lacking: it also appeared based on a belief that his expensively assembled squad was good enough to survive.

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And they have not been; not with a more proven Premier League manager in Dean Smith, who may wonder if Norwich was his rebound job, taken a week after his break-up with Aston Villa. Of Webber’s 11 signings last summer – even if two, Ben Gibson and Dimitris Giannoulis, were triggered by previous loan deals – none have been successful. A talent-spotter who had a high strike rate in the transfer market faces questions over whether he can identify Premier League players.

If being at Norwich, often unable to buy footballers established at elite level, especially if top-flight rivals want them, offers a mitigating circumstance, he has to shop in other outlets. Webber proved brilliant at raiding the Bundesliga B as the surprise promotions for Huddersfield and Norwich (in 2019) recorded. He looks a master of second-tier signings. Teemu Pukki came on a free transfer and, after firing Norwich into the top flight twice, has gone a long way to making them £200m.

And yet Webber could start to look the Neil Warnock of sporting directors, forever able to plot a path out of the Championship but incapable of finding a way to remain in the Premier League. Of those 11 signings, Normann at least began well, though City do not own the Norwegian. And yet Norwich needed an immediate impact from others, but none looked ready-made for the survival mission, they took two points from their first nine games and, while they briefly clambered out of the bottom three in January, it felt their fate was sealed from the start. Perhaps Norwich were luckless, both with a demanding early-season fixture list and ill-timed Covid cases, but they were also hapless.

The notion newcomers would make this campaign different was swiftly dispelled. Milot Rashica at least flickered in the new year. Josh Sargent’s sole achievement was to finish off Claudio Ranieri at Watford. The borrowed Billy Gilmour seems a symbolic let-down, lauded elsewhere and loathed at times in Norfolk. Giannoulis has been awful at left-back, Kabak underwhelming in the centre of defence. It was a recruitment drive with a curious absence: a striker. Now Pukki has 10 league goals and no one else more than two. Webber’s trio of wingers, attacking midfielders and No 10s – Christos Tzolis, Sargent and Rashica – have a combined total of three goals and three assists, none courtesy of the young Greek. Norwich are the lowest scorers in the division, contriving to get nine fewer goals than Burnley.

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Their £60m did not come close to securing survival. Perhaps it will bring another promotion but so far there are few signs of another windfall in a window. If a host of buys in the £8m region seemed based on a theory at least one would turn into another Buendia, a player who could be sold for £30m, now they look a group likelier to leave at a loss.

Norwich’s blueprint last summer has come to look a flawed strategy. And while they have been savvy sellers in recent years, most of the most profitable departures – James Maddison, Jamal Lewis, Ben Godfrey, the Murphy twins, Jacob and Josh – were not Webber’s signings, while they failed to cash in on Max Aarons and Todd Cantwell when their value was highest, perhaps by overpricing them, and may have to count a cost in the millions they will miss out on. As it is, the summer’s big sales are likelier to be two of the homegrown than any of last summer’s spending spree.

And so Norwich return to the Championship with a host of expensive underachievers. That had not been the Webber way. His three promotions – one with Huddersfield, two at Norwich – came from boxing cleverer than everyone else. Norwich advanced by barely spending, but now they have forked out to regress. They still don’t have evidence Webberball can work in the Premier League while next season for him includes dates with both Mount Everest and Rotherham.