Fresh reaction given to Norwich City situation - I wanted to give Liam Manning time but things look "quite scary" now | OneFootball

With a quarter of the season played, Norwich City are in the Championship relegation zone - FLW's Canaries fan pundit has some strong words about it.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

Norwich City's 2025-26 season is only going from bad to worse, with the club now unexpectedly in the Championship relegation places.

A fourth successive defeat at Derby County on Tuesday night dropped Norwich City into the Championship's relegation zone. It's been a disastrous start to the season under Liam Manning, and pressure is already starting to build under the new head coach, with the Canaries having lost all five of their home games so far and the team unable to gel.

The question of what happens next is an open one, so Football League World have spoken to our resident Norwich fan pundit Zeke Downes to get his assessment of what is going wrong at Carrow Road and what could be done to get his club back on track and pushing back up the table, and who would be the best option to replace Manning, should the club decide that it's simply not working out with him.

"It's rinse and repeat every time" - Norwich City blasted over poor performances

Zeke can see very clear patterns in what's been going wrong on the pitch for Norwich this season: "I was prepared to give Manning more time than most fans. I am not as negative as most would be, I've tried to be a bit more positive. But it's one of those things now where we're seeing in every game the same thing happen, where we look okay in spells in the first half and then struggle to make any chances. (Josh) Sargent's isolated on his own up front and there's nothing he can really do to improve that. And then, in the second half, it gets worse, and we don't even show up. We look awful and the opposition score from one of our mistakes, and it's rinse and repeat every single time."

And while Zeke wants to be patient and give the new manager time, he's not seeing many reasons to do so, with so few signs of progress: "I wanted it to change. I don't like to keep changing managers. I like having a manager that we can have for years, and really have that bond with them. I wanted it to be him, but at this point it seems impossible. You can't lose 1-0 to Derby. They weren't very good, and neither were we."

Zeke feels that the amount of money spent by the club during the summer means that both the players and the manager will have known exactly what expectations were for Norwich this season: "This isn't a position we need to be in. He's made a lot of comments about how this is "where we are" and I don't see how this can be "where we are" because JHT was sacked because we did badly and he didn't know that the aim was top six, but now at the start of this season everybody knows that the aim was top six. Manning knows that, the players know that, we spent £50-odd million. You don't spend that sort of money and aim for a top half position, or aim to not be relegated, which is what it looks like now."

And he understands that the problems at Norwich could run deeper than Manning alone, with particular attention turning to the club's sporting director Ben Knapper: "So something isn't that isn't happening, isn't working, be that Manning or the players not being good enough. Is that Knapper's fault? Is it the owners, even though the owners are giving us some money to spend? Have they backed Knapper incorrectly? Did they have an idea about him and it's not worked out? But it's a bad situation. Everything's looking very bleak at this moment."

On the subject of who could replace Manning should the club pull the trigger on him, Zeke points out that the club's current predicament makes them unappealing to the very managers they'd want to attract: "I don't know who we'd replace Manning with exactly, but this is the point we're at. All the managers we would want, who would have been on our radar at the start of this season or before this season are now unlikely to want to join because of what is happening at the club right now, where we are in the league."

There is one person that Zeke identifies clearly as his ideal replacement, but doubts whether he would want the job: "Mark Robins would have been a really good choice and would be the number one choice now. But I don't see why he would join when he's doing pretty well at Stoke. There's obviously [Gary] O'Neil and I wouldn't be too against it, but I see a lot of negativity around him. I think he speaks well, but maybe the style if play isn't quite what we'd want."

But ultimately, Zeke is worried for the season ahead, and doesn't see any easy solutions to the club's current woes: "I think that's where we're at. I don't know who would replace him. I just want something to happen and it to improve and it to turn around because this is going to be a long season if not and it looks quite scary at this point."

The more Norwich City feel they have to rip out, the more complex things will become

Should Norwich decide to let go of Liam Manning, there are available options to replace him. Russell Martin is the current bookmakers' favourite, having just been sacked by Rangers, with Gary O'Neil another available option.

But with Stoke City in sixth place in the Championship table, it certainly feels as though this isn't a position that former Norwich player Mark Robins would be interested in at the moment, even though he ticks all the right boxes in terms of his connection with the club and his record in recent years at both Coventry and Stoke.

And it may well be that clearing out more than just the head coach is something that the club may believe necessary. Ben Knapper is fairly high-profile for a Championship sporting director, and ultimate responsibility for this season's failings will come to rest with him.

But there's an inherent problem with this. The more changes that are made, the more difficult making those changes becomes. Zeke identifies that replacing the head coach at this point of the season will be difficult. Adding a new sporting director would only further complicate matters, and Norwich may not be able to get the candidate they want for that position at this early point in a season.

Amid all this uncertainty at Carrow Road, one thing is just about certain. In 22nd place in the Championship table, without a single point having picked up from their home matches, and without a win in the League since the 30th August, things need to change quickly at Norwich City, or that dreaded scenario of relegation into League One may just become a reality.